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THE GARDENER'S MONTJJL ) 



iMay. 



your corrospondont Mr. llanlin*:. wlio used to 

 ijive us siuh intorosiinj; and valuable accounts 

 of his travels in Australia, &c. ? I should like 

 to see some more of the same from him ajjain. 

 (We have one from Mr. II. to appear sov-.n. Ei).| 



liPlTORIAI. XOTIiS. 



ETHorE.vx Notes, by the Editoh. — No. '.(.— 

 While on the subject of public parks, it may 

 be as well to cross the Knplish Channel, and 

 look at some of the French ones. thoujj;h we 

 shall have to come back to Old Enj^land for 

 other matters before we return to America. We 

 have to cross the sea to get to France, as most 

 of the readers know, and as I like the sea I nat- 

 urally chose the lonirest way of <;oing across. I 

 may say I love the sea. She and I were always 

 bosom friends. Once when in the darkness 

 around me, I had to swim for life on her broad 

 waters, with no knowledge of the compass 

 points, and I was as likely to go away as 

 toward the shore, she brought me though insen- 

 sible to land; and on another occasion, when in 

 the caliin and our vessel sunk to the bottom, she 

 kindly helped me out of my little prison, and 

 favored me over other unfortunates in aiding me 

 to swim to shoi'e. There are few tilings so sweet to 

 me a.s to be rocked to sleep by my good old friend; 

 so instead of the hour or so required for a toss 

 over the Straits of Dover, I got on a steamboat 

 at New Haven about dark, went at once to my 

 berth, and, after a sound sleep, woke at eight 

 o'clock next morning to find the boat at Dieppe, 

 in France. But I must skip some days of obser- 

 vations in the fields and forests, gardens and 

 orchards, and go at once to my task of describing 

 the public gardens of Paris. I have been told, 

 and no doubt the reader has often been told, that 

 Paris is France; but I can say that whoever take s 

 this saying in an universal sense, will miss 

 something if he does not see France for himself 

 as well as Paris. Most travelers make a fatal 

 mistake here. They go to a few large cities, or 

 to some special points, as perhaps picture galler- 

 ies, churches, nurseries, and the public gardens, 

 the grand stores, the Boulevards and the Royal 

 Palaces, and they have "seen France." But the 

 France of the guide books and guides in general, 

 is very different from France as one may find it 

 if he will only use his own judgment and go 

 poking about for himself. He may find at first, 

 as I did, that the French language he thought 

 he knew, may do to make himself fairly under- 



stood, but if will fake a few days to understand 

 the rapid; liuhtniiig-like sounds you hear in reply 

 tc» your (juestions. Slill it is well worth trying 

 by one will) wants to see France. It is probable 

 ih;ii tbc reason why foreigners keep to the large 

 cities is (in account of the difficulties of the lan- 

 iruage. In all the large cities people who speak 

 English are common. It is remarkable that so 

 few English people though so near France know 

 French. Once our train stopped for some reason 

 some fifteen miimtes in a long, dark tunnel. It 

 was not long before nois}- shouts and jokes came 

 out all along the line from the numerous coach- 

 es forming the train, but not a word of French 

 did I hear. 1 sujipose this "Who's afraid?" way 

 of shouting, under these circumstances, is 

 not a French characteristic. However it 

 showed me there were many English 

 people on the train, but, thouiih for some reason 

 we were detained at our journey's end, and I had 

 a chance to mix with this crowd of English- 

 speaking people, I did not find one who knew 

 French. Such people cannot see France. 



As to the Public Gardens of Paris, a beautiful 

 little one is that called the garden of the city of 

 Paris, in the Rue d'Anjou. It is well worth 

 visiting by those who wish to see how beautiful 

 a little piece of ground can be made. The spot 

 was the place where Louis XVI and Marie Antoi- 

 nette were beheaded jtnd buried during the Revo- 

 lutionary troubles. The bodies were afterwards 

 removed to the Cathedral of St. Denis, and a 

 memorial chapel built by Louis XVIII on the 

 ground, and the little plot about it laid out for 

 the public. Immediately around the building the 

 ground is arranged in parallelograms, well in 

 accord with the style, and the only plants used 

 in the decorations are green grass, borders of ever- 

 green ivy, box edging, and standard roses, which 

 come from among the trailing ivy up to three or 

 four feet from the cround, and furnish all the 

 sweet fiowers that teil the bees the story of the 

 dead. 



The little square forms the entrance, as it were, 

 to the Memorial Grounds. The peculiar feature 

 of the landscape gardening is the raising and 

 lowering of the ground so as to produce an un- 

 dulating surface, on what would otherwise be 

 naturally a level piece of ground. It requires an 

 immense amount of true art to conceal the fsict 

 ! that these undulations were made by the hand 

 of man, yet it is just here that the art is success- 

 ful. It strikes the eye as a naturally rolling 

 piece of ground, and which mail has simply pol- 



