STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



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of the Champs Elysees. From the Triumphal Arch to the great public 

 square, the Place de la Concorde, a distance of one-and-a-third miles, it 

 passes between palaces and is bordered by lines of trees. At its middle 

 point it sweeps out into a broad circle with fountains, flower-beds and 

 shrubbery, and from this point to the square is lined on each side with 

 groves and parks and palaces, with concert gardens and other places of 

 amusement, which, when lighted with their myriads of gas-jets, present 

 one of the gayest night scenes in the world. 



The Place de la Concofde, which we now enter, has at its center the 

 great Egyptian obelisk of Luxor, and on either side a great fountain, 

 called the fountain of the rivers and the fountain of the seas. Around 

 the square, on eight great masses of masonry as pedestals, are the colossal 

 sitting statues of female forms representing the eight chief cities of 

 France. Near where the obelisk stands was erected, in the revolutionary 

 days, the fearful guillotine, under whose sharp axe nearly three thousand 

 heads, including those of Louis XVL and his queen, Marie Antoinette, 

 rolled to the ground. Continuing on our way, we enter the garden of 

 the Tuileries, another of the parks of Paris. At first this is a grove, 

 nearly half a mile long by nearly a thousand feet in width. The ground 

 is chiefly graveled, to afford place for the children to play and idlers to 

 lounge, and for the military concerts furnished here free to the public 

 two or three times a week. Advancing along the central avenue, we 

 approach the ruins of the once famous and beautiful palace, burned by 

 the Commune, and in its immediate presence we meet again the green 

 sward, nowhere, it seems to me, so green as in Paris, cut with the flower- 

 beds and the patches of "carpet gardening," and interrupted with 

 tastefully-arranged masses of shrubbery, which, with the fountains and 

 basins and statuary, present a scene whose equal in brilliancy and beauty 

 one would look in vain to find elsewhere. 



The facade of the Tuileries fronting upon these gardens was one 

 thousand feet in length. Only th'e end buildings have been restored, but 

 back from these there stretch on either side the lines of palaces which 

 connected the palace of the Tuileries with that of the Louvre, making a 

 vast quadrangle of palaces one-third of a mile in length. Within this 

 quadrangle spreads the square of the Place du Carrousel, and at its east- 

 ern extremity the Place Napoleon, another of the parks of Paris, with its 

 green sward, flower-beds and trees, in the very heart of the palace. 

 Around the eastern front of this quadrangle of palaces we find the gar- 

 dens of the Louvre, and again the massed banks of flowers, foliage plants, 

 shrubbery, gravel walks and convenient seats, where the white-capped 

 nurses sit to chat and little children play. 



If now we were to continue our walk eastward, along the Rue de 

 Rivoli, we should pass at frequent intervals other squares and parks, each 

 with its peculiar beauty, but too many to allow description. Across the 

 Seine, on the south, by the palace of the Luxembourg, its flower gardens 

 and parks; still farther on the Garden of Plants, one of the most famous 

 botanical gardens in the world, also with its parks and zoological garden; 

 at the end of our route, passing the barriers, nearly seven miles from our 



