to unite the lines in a single station probably impracticable. In time, however, the roads must come in on elevated viaducts, or concentrate in three or four stations which communicate with the central parts of the town by elevated roads. This state of things arose from the fact that the railways antedated, and we may say made, the town, which has grown up along their lines. To a town of pure business, transportation was the first requisite, and the newer roads have been encouraged to penetrate as far into the city as they could. Now that it is necessary to make it a city to live in safely and agreeably, the railways are regarded from another point of view. I suppose a sociologist would make some reflections on the effect of such a thorough permeation of tracks, trains, engines, and traffic upon the temperament of a town, the action of these exciting and irritating causes upon its nervous centres. Living in a big railway-station must have an effect on the nerves. At present this seems a legitimate part of the excited activity of the city; but if it continues, with the rapid increase of wealth and the growth of a leisure class, the inhabitants who can afford to get away will live here only the few months necessary to do their business and take a short season of social gayety, and then go to quieter places early in the spring and for the summer months. It is at this point of view that the value of the park system appears, not only as a relief, as easily accessible recreation-grounds for the inhabitants in every part of the city, but as an element in society life. These parks, which I have already named, contain 1742 acres. The two south parks, connected so as to be substantially one, have 957 acres. Their great connecting boulevards are interfered with somewhat by railway-tracks, and none of them, except Lincoln, can be reached without crossing tracks on which locomotives run, yet, as has been said, the most important of them are led to by good driving-roads from the heart of the city. They have excellent roads set apart for equestrians as well as for driving. These facilities induce the keeping of horses, the setting up of fine equipages, and a display for which no other city has better opportunity. This cannot but have an appreciable effect upon the growth of luxury and display in this direction. Indeed, it is already true that the city keeps more private carriages—for the pleasure not only of the rich, but of the well-to-do—in proportion to its population, than any other large city I know. These broad thoroughfares, kept free from traffic, furnish excellent sleighing when it does not exist in the city streets generally, and in the summer unequalled avenues for the show of wealth and beauty and style. In a few years the turnouts on the Grand Boulevard and the Lincoln Park drive will be worth going far to see for those who admire—and who does not? for, the world over, wealth has no spectacle more attractive to all classes—fine horses and the