STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



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The avenue to the northeast from the Arc de Triomphe brings us to 

 one of the smaller, but most famous and beautiful of the parks of Paris. 

 This is the Pare Monceau. It includes about ten acres, and formerly 

 belonged to the Duke of Orleans, the father of Louis Philippe. It is 

 difficult to conceive how one can gather more of beauty within ten acres 

 of land than may be found here. It was laid out by Carmontel, who in 

 explaining his plans said, " Nature varies according to climates. Let us 

 attempt by means of illusions to vary also the climates, or rather to cause 

 the climate in which we are to be forgotten. Let us transport into our 

 gardens the scene-changes of the opera. Let us cause to be seen here in 

 reality what the most skillful painters offer there in decorations, from all 

 ages and all places. It may be permitted to avoid the cold monotony 

 produced by pretended and severe precepts, which constrain the imagina- 

 tion. Since everything is to be created, let us use our liberty to please, 

 to animate and to interest. We need gardens where nature presents itself 

 under its most agreeable forms. It is necessary to perpetuate here the 

 charm which one experiences here on entering, to renew it by all means, 

 and to cause to be born in the soul the desire to revisit them every day 

 and to possess them. The true art," he adds, "is that of knowing how 

 to retain the promenaders by the variety of objects presented to them." 



And certainly this beautiful park responds well to the ideas of its 

 skillful creator. It is the very gem of landscape gardening. Turn where 

 you will, new views meet the eye, and new objects engage the attention, 

 grottoes and groves, pyramids and temples, lakelets and fountains and 

 statues, shaded lawns, undulating in every variety of curved surface, sloping 

 up to hills whose tops hidden by shrubbery suggest heights impossible to 

 reach, or stretching away under broad shading trees, with flower-beds, 

 parterres, brilliant with foliage plants and gay flowers, bewildering one 

 by the extent of the drives and the walks, till you are ready to believe 

 that a hundred acres, instead of ten, stretch around you. 



I cannot properly close these imperfect notices of the Parisian parks 

 without referring again to the avenues and boulevards, old and new, by 

 which the mediaeval Paris, with its narrow and crooked streets, the nests 

 of revolution and disease, has been changed into the new Paris, the 

 model for the city builders of both continents. With an arbitrariness 

 which I fear we should count an inexcusable breach of private right, the 

 hammer and the axe went crashing through some of the thickest and 

 most populous parts of the city, till broad avenues were opened, letting 

 in light and air, with personal and political salvation. It is said that 

 the Government paid for all the property used, and reimbursed itself by 

 the sale, at remunerative prices, of the more eligible sites thus secured for 

 building and trade. 



The Paris avenue is divided into three nearly equal strips, the center 

 one for the carriage-drive and the others occupied by the sidewalks and 

 the tree plantations, with grass-plots and wayside seats for the weary 

 pedestrians, invalids and nurses with little children. These avenues thus 

 serve the purposes of public parks; and Robinson, an English writer, 

 affirms that the trees planted in the streets of Paris outnumber all those 



