JOHN EVELYN 105 



... By the way we alighted at St Cloes, where, on an St Cloud. 

 eminence neere the river, the Archbishop of Paris has a garden, 

 for the house is not very considerable, rarely watered and furnish'd 

 with fountaines, statues, and groves, the walkes are very faire ; the 

 fountain of Laocoon is in a large square pool, throwing the water 

 neere 40 feet high, and having about it a multitude of statues and 

 basins, and is a suprising object : but nothing is more esteem'd 

 than the cascade falling from the greate stepps into the lowest 

 and longest walke from the Mount Parnassus, which consists of a 

 grotto, or shell house, on the summit of the hill, wherein are 

 divers water-workes and contrivances, to wet the spectators ; this 

 is covered with a fayre cupola, the walls paynted with the Muses, 

 and statues placed thick about it, whereof some are antiq and 

 good. In the upper walkes are two perspectives, seeming to 

 enlarge the allys. In this garden are many other contrivances. 



About a league further we went to see Cardinal Richelieu's Rueil. 

 villa at Ruell. The house is small, but fairly built, in form of 

 a castle, moated round. The offices are towards the road, and 

 over against are large vineyards walled in. 



Though the house is not of the greatest, the gardens about 

 it are so magnificent that T doubt whether Italy has any ex- 

 ceeding it for all rarities of pleasure. The garden nearest the 

 pavilion is a parterre, having in the middst divers noble brasse 

 statues, perpetually spouting water into an ample bassin, with 

 other figures of the same metal ; but what is most admirable 

 is the vast enclosure, and variety of ground, in the large garden, 

 containing vineyards, cornefields, meadows, groves (whereof one 

 is one of perennial greens), and walkes of vast lengthes, so 

 accurately kept and cultivated, that nothing can be more agree- 

 able. On one of these walkes, within a square of tall trees, is 

 a basilisc of copper which managed by the fountainere casts 

 water neere 60 feet high, and will of itself move round so 

 swiftly, that one can hardly escape wetting. This leads to 

 the Citroniere, where is a noble conserve of all those rarities ; 

 and at the end of it is the Arch of Constantine, painted on a 



