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CHAPTER XIV. 

 The Gardens of Versailles. 



This being one ot' the must celebrated gardens in the work!, it 

 may profit us to examine it somewhat in detail — were we, how- 

 ever, to treat of it in proportion to its real merits as a garden, a 

 very small amount of space would suffice. Let us pass through the 

 vast stone courtyard and look from the garden-front of the palace. 

 Standing near the palace walls, one first sees a vast expanse of 

 gravel, some marble margins of great water-basins, sundry protu- 

 berances from the level of the water, and away in the distance an 

 effect like that afforded by a suburban canal in a highly- practical 

 and unlovely country. A few Lombardy Poplars help the remote 

 vista, but the effect of the whole is from this point of our view 

 lamentable. To the right of the palace is a parterre-garden, with 

 high. Box-edgings, clipped conical Yews and other trees, and 

 numerous statues prominent against dense woods of Horse-chestnut 

 trees. To the left is one of those spreads of gravel and grass, 

 diversified by stone steps, walls, and a few stumpy clipped Yews, 

 forming what are termed geometrical gardens, Horse-chestnut 

 groves starting up beyond it and somewhat relieving the whole. 

 Advancing from the palace, the lower terrace and its surroundings 

 come into view, the faces of the terrace walls are hedged with 

 green; above the terrace- walls Yew-trees planted and clipped very 

 regularly ; in the centre there is an elaborate fountain, and the 

 dense groves of trees near by again spring up and only just save 

 the scene from bald formality, not to say ugliness. Versailles is 

 a vast garden, much of its interest hidden behind these kindly 

 groves of trees, but it is about this spot that we obtain the 

 broadest effects of this far-famed place, and may judge how far 



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