Indeed, one of the most wonderful and attractive features of Central Park is the skill with which its apparent size has been magnified. A stranger driving or walking through it would never suppose that in his entire journey he had never been more than four hundred and fifty yards away from the streets of New York. The almost total exclusion of the outer world, and the production of effects of distance, are really remarkable triumphs of landscape gardening. [Illustration: ON THE DRIVE.] Another great charm of Central Park is the marvelous variety of its scenery and embellishments. In the Mall, and especially in the terrace that leads from it to the lake, we find the highest development of artificial decoration. The broad promenade and the straight avenue of trees, the work of masons and sculptors, the plashing fountain and the lake below—all these combine to produce the appearance of the garden of some old French chateau. On the other hand, on the banks of the Harlem Mere, in the North Park, sylvan nature reigns in almost primeval wildness. Here and there in the park are broad, level meadows, divided by stretches of thick wood. The Ramble, with its labyrinth of winding paths, its rustic bridge, its cave, and its miniature water falls, is an ideal Arcadian spot, while the lawn tennis ground presents a _fin de siècle_ contrast. Then there are over thirty buildings, put to almost as many different uses, from the monkey house in the menagerie to the lofty tower of the Belvedere, which seems like a picturesque corner of a Rhine castle. As further evidence of the amount of work that has been done to perfect the park, and of the variety of its contents, it may be stated that it can boast of nine sheets of water, forty eight bridges and archways, nine miles of drives, five miles of bridle path, and nearly thirty miles of walks; that it has nineteen gates, and that over half a million trees have been set out within its limits. [Illustration: THE OBELISK IN CENTRAL PARK.]