HISTOIIICAL NOTICES. 25 



— to make us recognise the real genius of the place 

 Taking Versailles on the gigantic type of the French 

 school it need scarcely be said that it embraces broad 

 gravelled terraces, long alleys of yew and hornbeam, vast 

 orangeries, groves planted in the quincunx style, and 

 water-works embellished with, and conducted through 

 every variety of sculptured ornament. It takes the middle 

 line between the two other geometric schools — admitting 

 more sculpture and other works of art than the Italian, but 

 not overpowered with the same number of 'huge masses 

 of littleness ' as the Dutch. There is more of promenade, 

 less of parterre; more gravel than turf; more of the de- 

 ciduous than the evergreen tree. The practical water-wit 

 of drenching the spectators was in high vogue in the 

 ancient French gardens ; and Evelyn, in his account of 

 the Duke de Richelieu's villa, describes with some relish 

 how ' on going, two extravagant musketeers shot at us 

 with a stream of water from their musket barrels.' Con 

 trivances for dousing the visitors — ' especially the ladies' — 

 which once filled so large a space in the catalogue of every 

 show place, seem to militate a little against the national 

 character of gallantry ; but the very fact that everything 

 was done to surprise the spectator and stranger, evinces 

 how different was their idea of a garden from the home and 

 familiar pleasures which an Englishman looks to in his." 



It is scarcely necessary for us to say, that this new splen- 

 dor of the French in their gardens was more or less copied, 

 at the time, all over Europe. " Ainsi font les Francais — 

 voila ce que fai vu en France," was the law of fashion in 

 the gardening taste from which there was no higher court 

 of appeal. But, in copying, every nation seems to have 

 mingled with the "grand style" s^me elementary notiong 



