THE WASHINGTON MONUMENT AND THE GARDEN.

polygon have become little parks or plots on which public buildings rise from amid a well-kept sward. (See cut page 1349). The avenue and its engirding elms are so planted that an observer stationed on the western terrace of the Capitol may look down the central expanse of undulating green till his eye rests on the stately Monument. Thus, by a simple device, the Monument has been brought back into the vista of the Capitol.

The columns of elms climb the slope of the Monument, and ascend terraces at the right and left, widening out as they proceed. From these terrace-groves the spectator overlooks the busy city and the river winding at the base of green Virginian hills. Tiny Greek temples beneath the trees offer the tired clerk or artisan a shade more cooling even than that of the branching elms, or serve as the domiciles of refreshing springs. Between these groves the Monument towers, redeemed at last from the mediocrity of surroundings which robbed it of its due magnificence. A flight of steps, 300 feet wide, whose sides are flush with the sides of the tapis vert in the Mall, leads to the Monument garden, an imposing example of the formal style of landscape gardening. At the point where the axis of the White House intersects the axis of the Capitol-the exact center, in fact, of the great polygon-lies a large round pool of crystal water, similar to the pools at Versailles. Rectangular basins of water on three sidès form, with the Monument itself, a figure pointing to this central pool. The rectangular basins are surrounded by regular plots of green, bisected crosswise by broad paths. The garden is framed in by the groves already described, and two similar ones to the west. To the spectator standing in the

midst of this sunken garden, the Monument, with its already stupendous proportions, seems to gain an additional elevation.

The White Lot, as the space south of the White House is called, remains practically what it was, an expanse of green paradeground, broken only by paths which form a circle topped by a crescent. But along its sides, as the promenader saunters from the Monument to the White House, rise four rows of linden trees, thus forming an avenue of refreshing shade reminiscent of the "Unter den Linden" of Berlin. Beyond these trees rise imposing structures of white marble. Fronting on the White Lot stands the White House itself, unchanged in its general aspect; and beyond it lies Lafayette Square, flanked by public buildings, mostly new.

The rectangle just south of the Monument, forming a figure similar to that of the White House division, and bordered by the same streets east and west, has become a place of recreation for the people, and is therefore appropriately called "Washington Common." A great stadium, bordered on each side by smaller playgrounds, stretches southward from the Monument. Here the public at its times of recreation indulges itself in American sports, and on gala occasions firework displays on a lavish scale are given. Below this pleasance are located a group of structures devoted mainly to the uses of recreation: a gymnasium, a theater, public baths and locker buildings. The central feature of this group is a great rond-point, commemorative of national heroes. An extensive pool of sylvan character, developed from a part of the tidal basin of the Potomac, invites the bather in summer and the skater in winter. South of this pool lies a wood, imitative of nature in the seemingly capricious arrangement of its trees, and traversed by alleys after the manner of Lenôtre. The sightseer, wearied by a landscape laid out in formal though imposing designs, finds in this wood rest for the eye. Along the river wall winds a driveway, which reminds the traveler fresh from Venice of the public garden on the Grand Canal. From this driveway one gazes far down the beautiful hill-bordered stream.

West of the Monument garden, extending for a mile to the bank of the winding Potomac, lies a great parallelogram, 1,600 feet in width. At the head of this space stands the new Lincoln Memorial, an imposing

portico of lofty Doric columns. It is embellished by appropriate groups of sculp ture, of which a majestic group on the roof is the crown. A circle of linden trees, forming an emerald peristyle, four rows deep and broken by radiating avenues, encompasses the marble pile. By one of these avenues you reach the memorial bridge to Arlington Heights. In another avenue, and directly on the line between the Memorial and the Washington Monument, stands a life-like statue of Abraham Lincoln. From its base a wide canal, similar in appearance to the canals of Versailles and Fontainebleau, extends for two-thirds of a mile to the Monument garden. Plots of green, traversed by diagonal paths meeting at

within the old city, which formerly appeared as little conventional parks, show to our sightseer's wide-open eye a rich and varied treatment. Some of them are specialized as playgrounds for little children, with swing and "teeter" boards, with sand courts, and with safe and shallow wading pools along whose borders mothers and nurses can sit in sheltered benches and watch the tots at play. Again, there are well-shaded concert groves; some squares, that exhibit no particular glory by day, are converted at night into a paradise by the play of colored lights in electric fountains or on national holidays are the scenes of firework displays. Here are squares that, planted with evergreen, are abloom in the depths of winter.

various angles, line the canal on either side; and beyond these are areas completing the western part of the polygon, which have received a treatment corresponding to that of the similar spaces on the other side of the Monument.

Our imaginary observer, visiting the Washington of a few decades hence, has now seen the entire Mall polygon, a formal landscape unequaled for stately grandeur and imposing proportions among the cities of the world. He now quits the Mall to take a turn in his carriage or on his horse about the District park system, the most beautiful in America, and comparable in extent to that of Paris, if the relative size of the two cities be but considered.

The three hundred squares and circles

And everywhere fountains toss up their spray, cooling the heated air through the sweltering Washington summers.

But it is in the outlying districts that the park system takes on its newest and its fairest aspect. From the Lincoln Memorial to the mouth of Rock Creek runs a parkway, skirting the Potomac, but at a higher level than the new-built quay and the commercial structures that lie by the riverside. The valley of Rock Creek, redeemed from the unsightliness which disfigured it in spots, is now beautiful in sylvan simplicity, with its wild and picturesque stream and its precipitous knolls overgrown with trees. Zoological Park remains as it was, a tract of one hundred and seventy acres, where the Smithsonian Institution keeps its living

animals, some of them specimens rarely and ever more rarely found. From Zoological Park northward to the District line extends Rock Creek Park, a valley about four miles in length and one-half mile in average width, largely untouched by the pick and shovel of civilization. The valley of the creek is here tortuous and confined, and flanked by steep, high, and densely-wooded hills. It consists mainly of forest-lands, in which the trees are of great age and beauty. Macadamized drives, not too wide, and not too near the depths of the gorge, make the Park accessible to the public.

By way of Broad Branch Parkway, the sightseer-yourself, let say-reaches

us

tions of time, you will take the roads that lead toward the northwest to the Great Falls, a phenomenon hardly less grand than the sublimest passages of Western scenery. But if you choose rather to confine yourself within the ample bounds of the District park system, you will follow the Conduit Road to its end, where Georgetown Parkway begins. This drive connects Georgetown with the Rock Creek valley, so that the historic old town has become in fact as well as in theory a part of Washington. At one point the lover of architectural splendor reins in his horse before the Naval Observatory, a masterpiece of Richard M. Hunt's creative powers. At another point on a

Fort Reno Park, the highest point in the District, commanding wide views in all directions. Or, if you prefer Soapstone Parkway, you can ascend either of the two knuckles rising high above the streets at the western end of the drive, and look down thence over a rich landscape stretching off to the Monument. Proceeding still further to the westward, you enter the Conduit Road where it abuts against the receiving reservoir, and drive along the broad avenue, enjoying the rare scenery of the Potomac palisades-the canal dotted with its lazily-moving craft, and the winding river with its vista of the wild and high Virginian hills. If you are in search of natural beauty and are not restrained by considera

height overlooking the surrounding landscape, stand the ivy-grown halls of Georgetown College.

From this driveway you again enter the northern portion of Rock Creek Parkway, and passing thence hurriedly through Zoological Park, you turn into Piney Branch Roadway, in the midst of a landscape continually waxing in beauty. At the Municipal Hospital you halt in a formal plaza, where eight streets converge, to the delight of those who, like the brilliant French engineer, regard with predilection the axial treatment in the laying out of streets. Thence a formal boulevard leads to the new Soldiers' Home. Reluctantly quitting this idyllic spot, you let your

horse canter leisurely along another parkway, largely bordered by a charming wood, until you reach Patterson Park, the prettiest natural grove in the District. Within it stands the old Patterson mansion, now converted into a casino for the sale of refreshments. Beyond this you pass the Columbia Institution, a national college for the nigher education of the deaf and dumb; then, after another stretch of parkway, you ascend Mount Hamilton, a steep, lonely hill, overgrown with the characteristic vegetation of Southern mountains. Through a wood the road winds gracefully up the hill to its summit, where a marble pavilion overlooks an extensive landscape, in which the Capitol is the dominant figure.

Thence a short informal parkway, and you come to the Anacostia Water Park.

From the Water Park you ascend and descend with the inequalities of a drive that takes you past historic forts, stationed, as if still on guard over the capital city, on the summits of steep hills; then you take the Riverside Drive along the Anacostia and the Potomac, and return along Shepherd Parkway, lined with governmental structures. Thence, crossing the Anacostia by a bridge, you pass through the crowded city, down the Mall and Washington Common to Potomac Park, a tract of seven hundred and forty acres. From the roadway that runs along the dike shutting out the Potomac floods you look down on an English garden, sloping away directly beneath your feet, or separated from you by a few rows of poplars and willows. The scene is like that of the Margarethen Insel at Budapest. Farther from the shore, along the Washington Channel, grow trees and shrubs and herbs representing all the varieties that can subsist in the climate of Washington. Thus the wooded portion of the park has become, as nearly as the demands of landscape beauty will allow, a National Arboretum.

Such is the vision of the new Washington, as it will appear a quarter century hence, or as it appears now in the minds of the able and aspiring artists who evolved the plan in its grand details. American art will surely always boast this as one of its solider achievements.

The illustrations for this article are from photographs taken especially for THE WORLD TO-DAY from the original drawings by Miss Frances B. Johnston of Washing

ton.

WHITE, STEWART EDWARD, was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, March 12, 1873, graduated in philosophy from the University of Michigan in 1895, and became a student, for one year, in the law school of Columbia. Last year he published two books of considerable promise, "The Westerners" and "The Claim Jumpers." This he has now followed with a novel of more than ordinary worth, "The Blazed Trail," published by McClure, Phillips & Co.

Here, for the first time in American literature, the epic of the pioneer is given satisfactory presentation and complete realization. It is made vital, not only by telling of the hardships and braveries of the men who make civilization possible in the way of clearing off the northern forests for purposes of agriculture, but in linking the great lumber industry of Michigan and Wisconsin with the progress of man elsewhere, providing him with the essentials of home building and furnishing. It is a story of the present or immediate past, affording in its progress the opportunity for marked and vivid contrasts with the luxurious life led by wealthy and cultivated society in the city of Chicago. Within the limits of a single book of no extraordinary length may be found nothing that is not distinctively and essentially American. It is the accomplishment of the same purpose which actuated Mr. Frank Norris in his promised epic of the wheat, the first volume of the three, under the title of "The Octopus," being already well known.

That the lumber camps of the north should afford the best material for picturesque description is entirely evident. Following the men through all the details of their hard and wholesome lives in the wilderness, through the periods of degradation and hideous orgies in the settlements near the scenes of their labors, Mr. White takes the logs from the moment they are marked for felling and conducts them into the markets of the country. His hero, Harry Thorpe, is the son of a man who has committed a commercial crime, died soon after in disgrace, and left a son and daughter to face the world alone. Harry stifles at the thought of meeting day by day the people who are aware of the family misfortune, provides a place for his sister in the country, and sets out to make his fortune. The remoteness and wildness of the lumber camps appeal to him in equal

degree, and he spends a winter in bringing to bear upon his new occupation all the resources of a young and athletic body and an intelligence both keen and trained. With the information thus acquired, and with it no small knowledge of woodcraft, Thorpe goes out in the summer as a "landlooker," one who spies out desirable tracts of timber land and interests capital in their exploitation. In a locality which had already begun to attract the attention of others he finds a place for ostensible hunting and fishing, making a companion of an Indian, one of the scattered survivors of a once populous race. To this little camp comes a young Chicago man of large inherited means, and with the friendship which ripens quickly under freedom from

STEWART EDWARD WHITE.

conventional restraints, the two agree to become partners as well. Unwittingly exciting the suspicions of other claim seekers in the vicinity, Thorpe is able to secure the results of his summer's work for himself and his associate by a most thrilling run through the forest with the Indian for his guide, and at the beginning of the next season finds himself the head of a promising business, with the men whom he had outwitted as his desperate and unscrupulous enemies.

By the sternest discipline, exercised over himself as well as over his subordinates, Thorpe wins his way slowly toward success. But his partner is overtaken by a break in the market in which he had been speculating, and it soon becomes apparent that his ruin is sought by these enemies of his. Upon the downfall of the two young men they propose to find marked advantages for themselves, and the situation becomes critical. It is absolutely needful that a most unusual amount of lumber must be marketed in order to save the firm, and the interest of the book thenceforth lies largely in the race which the three camps under Thorpe are compelled to run against time.

It is in combining with this interest, a commercial one, the higher and more refined one of love that Mr. White shows himself to be a true artist. The earlier portion of the book has its only feminine element in Thorpe's sister, and she soon disappears, her nature being too much like her brother's to permit them happiness together. But at the very height of his activities in saving his partner's good name and his own business, the hero becomes acquainted with a young Chicago girl who has been the object of his dreams during the long years which he has passed in his womanless wilderness. Stern and reserved, with his brain at its fullest tension to gain him the success he longs for, a misunderstanding arises through his setting his duty before his love. The girl, by no means despairing, but rather confident that time will teach her lover the reality, does not lose faith, and waits.

In the manner in which the lesson is finally brought home to Harry Thorpe, Mr. White attains excellence. The story is fully spiritualized and lifted high above. the material plane upon which it hitherto proceeded at a single stroke. By it, too, the romance is given the ending that its subject matter demands. Throughout the narrative is informed with minute knowledge of the topic fully digested, with a fine sympathy for the men who have done so much, and done it so inconspicuously, to make life possible in the New World, and with a breadth, unity, and grasp which fully entitle the story to characterization as an epic.

WALLACE RICE,

Of the Critical Staff of "The Dial."