JO: 



TIIK PARKS AND GARDENS OF PARIS. [Chap. VH. 



StrcainUt issuin« jroiit Ivy-c'.ad Kock. 



CHAPTER VII. 



The Bois de Vincennes. 



The Bois de Vincennes may be briefly deseribod as a vast training 

 ground, but it is also, in parts, a beautiful public garden. It is 

 much broader in effect than the Bois de Boulogne, and has really 

 tine open airy spaces such as all large public parks should have ; 

 but this we mainly owe to the drill-master. Here, as in the Bois 

 de Boulogne, the plantations are far too dense, and the trees 

 starved for want of space. Still there are pleasant openings and 

 graceful evergreen trees and sparkling water, and altogether it 

 would be difficult to find a nobler advance on the old dismal 

 French garden with its shorn trees and hideous formalism. A 

 glance along some parts of the lakes here is more instructive and 

 satisfying than a study of all the geometrical gardening in France. 

 Across the little Lake S. Mande is a good view of the old Donjon 

 of Vincennes. On the islet in the lake there is a large interesting 

 group of trees showing weeping and columnar trees in juxta- 

 position. The effect of these — Lombardy and other Poplars, and 

 the weeping Willow — is shown in the illustration of tlie small lake. 

 The state in which water becomes a vital element in garden 

 scenery is seen here in the large lake that sparkles in the sun and 

 gives pleasant distance to the plantations. A temple on a knoll 

 over the water has a certain beauty in the landscape ; but such 

 structures arc mere all'cctation!^ in modern uardeus. If we must 



