the spirit of compromise begins to dog Lily's footsteps; she is pursued by the ghost of chance. Had the furies left her even for an instant, her life might have been a sacrament instead of an atonement. A glance, a touch of the hand, the merest turn of the screw would have sufficed. She is exposed to contamination at every turn, compromise upon compromise is forced upon her, stage by stage is she lowered in self-respect. And yet, throughout all her manifold temptations she manages in some mysterious way to preserve the core of integrity at the heart of her nature. Our emotions are purged, in Aristotelian phrase, through terror and pity by the spectacle of her instinctive, almost unconscious struggle to retain her inner essential purity. We stand transfixed with the most poignant compassion at the deep damnation of her taking off. In a recent letter, Mrs. Wharton said to me that the thesis of "The House of Mirth," if it must be sought anywhere, is to be found in these words (pp. 515-6):

"It was no longer, however, from the vision of material poverty that she (Lily) turned with the greatest shrinking. She had a sense of deeper impoverishment of an inner destitution compared to which outward conditions dwindled into insignificance. It was indeed miserable to be poor-to look forward to a shabby, anxious, middle-age, leading by dreary degrees of economy and self-denial to gradual absorption in the dingy communal existence of the boarding house. But there was something more miserable still-it was the clutch of solitude at her heart, the sense of being swept like a stray uprooted growth down the current of the years. That was the feeling which possessed her nowthe feeling of being something rootless and ephemeral, mere spin-drift of the whirling surface of existence, without anything to which the poor little tentacles of self could cling before the awful flood submerged them. And as she looked back she saw that there had never been a time when she had had any real relation to life. Her parents, too, had been rootless, blown hither and thither on every wind of fashion, without any personal existence to shelter them from its shifting gusts. She herself had grown up without any one spot of earth being dearer to her than another: there was no centre of early pieties, of grave enduring traditions, to which her heart could revert and from which it could draw strength for itself and tenderness for others. In whatever form a slowly-accumulated past lives in the blood-whether in the concrete image of the old house stored with visual memories, or in the conception of the house not built with hands, but made up of inherited passions and loyalties-it has the same power of broadening and deepening the individual existence, of attaching it by mysterious links of kinship to all the mighty sum of human striving."

In "The House of Mirth," Mrs. Wharton has achieved the astounding tour de force of writing a novel as realistic as anything of Bourget, which is, at the same time as absorbingly interesting as a romance of Weyman. The fidelity to fact of her human documents, the verisimilarity to nature of her characters, the veracity of her portraiture of a certain phase of contemporary society cannot with justice be called into question. The whole texture of the story is exquisite in the delicacy and the artistic deftness displayed in its construction, its workmanship. The fable is narrated in a tone of high seriousness and in a spirit of profound compassion. The style in which the tale is told has all the perfection of the style of Henry James with none of its obscurity. Indeed the style is so perfect that it almost awakes one's regret over its perfection; the characters are so accurately observed, so damningly portrayed that we shudder over the irony of the phrases, "the upper classes," and the "best society." "The House of Mirth" is a signal specimen of that reflective fiction which Stendahl has described as un miroir promenant sur la grande route." It is a "criticism of life, which is also a judgment."

Public Open Spaces in American Towns and

Cities*

BY FREDERICK Law Olmsted, Jr., and John Nolen

At the present time public spirited people in this country appreciate the value of open spaces in towns and cities. They realize that such areas are not only desirable, but increasingly necessary in order that opportunity for exercise and for the enjoyment of outdoor beauty may be more generally provided. In a vague way they approve of a large increase in the number of playgrounds and parks. But few even in the more enlightened communities seem yet to understand that these open spaces are of great variety, that they are or should be selected and designed to serve radically different purposes, and that the failure to understand this principle and to keep it constantly in mind leads to gross waste and inefficiency in our public grounds. In few other phases of private or public life is there so generally a lack of clear thinking. This is an important matter for American municipalities to consider, for failure to select sites discriminately, to design them for specific purposes and to confine their use to those purposes is to lose to a considerable degree the benefits that might otherwise accrue to the people and to waste the public funds.

It is, of course, true in this case as in most other matters that there is some overlapping. The purposes are not absolutely distinct and most public grounds are serviceable in a number of different ways. But it is equally true that the greatest efficiency here as elsewhere depends upon clear and intelligent differentiation, upon a recognition that the ends to be served are different and that therefore different means must usually be employed to meet them.

This article aims only to outline in a general way the more

The authors have prepared this paper for simultaneous publication in the SOUTH ATLANTIC QUARTERLY and in Charities. Mr. Olmsted is Professor of Landscape Architecture in Harvard University and Mr. Nolen is a landscape architect of Cambridge, Mass. The latter is now engaged in park construction in Charlotte, N. C., and other Southern cities.

important types of public grounds. For the sake of convenience and clearness they will be considered under six heads: (1) Streets, Boulevards and Parkways; (2) City Squares, Commons and Public Gardens; (3) Playgrounds (a) For little children, (b) For children of the school age, (c) For older boys and men and for girls and women; (4) Small or Neighborhood Parks; (5) Large Parks; (6) Great Outlying Reservations. These six divisions may be said to represent the normal requirements of large cities. For somewhat smaller places the Outlying Reservations and in some cases even the Large Parks might not be necessary. In such matters there can be no absolute rule. No system of public grounds could possibly be devised that would fit any and every community, for no two communities are alike. They represent infinite variations arising from differing physical, historical and social conditions. Success in any particular case will depend, therefore, not only upon a recognition of the different types of public grounds, but also upon an accurate and sympathetic estimate of the peculiar local conditions and local needs.

I. STREETS, BOULEVARDS AND PARKWAYS.

All communities, no matter what their size may be, need to regard the character and appearance of their streets. To do this intelligently, they must consider the primary purpose that streets in various parts of the town or city are to serve. For example, streets in the business sections would not normally be the same in width or treatment as in residential sections. Again, thoroughfares making through connections from one part of the city to another or even to outlying towns, would be different in many essential ways from streets that are intended for merely local use. This division of the subject, therefore, is fundamental and of practically universal concern. And a proper consideration of it should affect definitely the city plan.

Boulevards and Parkways are agreeable promenades in themselves and serve usually as pleasant means of access to parks from other parts of the city or from one park to another. Boulevards are usually arranged formally with rows

of shade trees and parallel ways for those on foot and on wheels. The simplest type has a broad drive in the centre with a walk on either side, separated from the drive by a belt of turf and always shaded by trees. Frequently two driveways are provided with a broad space between containing trees and turf and sometimes foot paths, bicycle paths, bridle paths or other conveniences; and often shrubs, flowers, statues and other decorations. In recent years some boulevards have been made to provide for electric car tracks upon a special turfed reservation with rows of trees, where the cars can attain high speed with little danger of collision with other vehicles. Such reservations are generally between two roadways, but in some suburban districts a double track is placed on either side of a single roadway between the curb and sidewalk.

A Parkway so far as it can be discriminated from a Boulevard, includes more breadth of turf or planted ground and also usually narrow passages of natural scenery of varying widths, giving it a somewhat parklike character and inducing a less formal treatment of the roads, paths and accessory features. Parkways are frequently laid out along streams so as to include the natural beauty of brook or river scenery and to preserve the main surface water channels in public control, thus providing for the adequate, economical and agreeable regulation of storm drainage and floods.

II. CITY SQUARES, COMMONS AND PUBLIC GARDENS.

These are a most usual type of public recreation grounds and often the most open to the charge of ill-considered selection and design. An opinion prevails very generally that a city cannot have too many "Squares" or "breathing places," and if they are not built upon and are green with grass and trees that they justify themselves. In a measure this is true and yet by taking thought these same areas may be made many times more serviceable. They are usually of small size and are found in the business as well as the residential sections of a city. Their principal functions are to furnish agreeable views for those passing by them or through them in the course of their daily business and to provide a pleasant