The police power of the state is not available for merely æsthetic purposes, and is quite inadequate to the solution of this special problem. Owners of land, under existing constitutional limitations, can with impunity lease to advertising companies the right to erect safely constructed billboards and paint the sides and roofs of barns with any advertisements not injurious to morals or contrary to public decency; nor can vulgarities which merely offend the sight and shock temperamental susceptibilities be construed as breaches of decency. “It is believed,” says a writer in the Harvard Law Review,[76] “that both on theoretical and practical grounds the law must be taken as settled that, although public æsthetic ends may be effectuated by statute or ordinance through the exercise of eminent domain, the same object may not be accomplished by legislation under the police power without compensation.” In the case of _Chicago_ v. _Gunning System_, 214 Ill. 628, the Supreme Court of Illinois declared that the legislature, by conferring authority upon the city council to abate nuisances and enforce police ordinances, had given that body ample power to regulate, within reasonable limits, the construction of billboards upon private property; but the court nevertheless condemned a particular ordinance for the reason, among others, that the purpose of certain sections seemed “to be mainly sentimental and to prevent sights which may be offensive to the æsthetic sensibilities of certain individuals residing in or passing through the vicinity of the billboards.” A broader control may, however, be exerted under the power of eminent domain. It is possibly within the capacity of the legislature to authorize park boards or other governmental bodies to acquire by condemnation proceedings, upon payment of compensation, the right, even in country districts, to restrict the use of all land within view of a driveway or park; but the exercise of that power with respect to property which does not actually front on the park or driveway scarcely falls within the domain of practical consideration in connection with the present Plan.