194 TlIK TAliKS AND CAKDKNS OF PARIS. [Chap. XIV. 



they are worthy of the praise bestowed on them ami of our admira- 

 tion or imitation, 



Versailles is often extolled as the queen of geometrical gardens, 

 and it is certainly a vast illustration of the formal style of 

 gardening. There are in books many dissertations on the several 

 styles of laying-out gardens ; indeed some have taken us to China 

 and Japan, others to Mexico for illustration ; but when all is read 

 and examined, what is the result to anybody who looks from words 

 to things ? That there are really two styles : — one straitlaced, 

 mechanical, with much wall and stone, or it may be gravel ; with 

 much also of such geometry as the designer of wall-papers excels 

 in, often poorer than that ; with an immoderate supply of spouting 

 water, and with trees in tubs as an accompaniment, and perhaps 

 griffins and endless plaster-work and sculpture of the poorer sort : 

 the other, with right desire, though often awkwardly, accepting 

 nature as a guide, and endeavouring to illustrate in our gardens, 

 so far as convenience and knowledge will permit, her many 

 treasures of the world of trees and flowers. 



We read that " we are forced, for the sake of accumulating our 

 power and knowledge, to live in cities : but such advantage as we 

 have in association with each other is in great part counter- 

 balanced by our loss of fellowship with nature. We cannot all 

 have our gardens now, nor our pleasant fields to meditate in at 

 eventide. Then the function of our architecture is, as far as may 

 be, to replace these ; to tell us about nature ; to possess us with 

 memories of her quietness ; to be solemn and full of tenderness 

 like her, and rich in portraitures of her ; full of delicate imagery 

 of the flowers we can no more gather, and of the living creatures 

 now far away from us in their own solitude." What, then, are 

 we to think of those who carry the dead lines and changeless 

 triumphs of the building and the studio into the garden, which, 

 above any other artificial creation, should give us the sweetest 

 and most wholesome " fellowship with nature ?" Simply that their 

 doings result from ignorance of what a true garden ought to be. 

 The Avorst thing that can be done with it is to introduce any feature 

 which, unlike the materials of our world-designer, never changes. 

 Away, then, with the afi'ectation of pretending to enjoy, with the 

 ignorance which believes that there is some occult beauty in, or 

 t'xcuse for, such gardens as this ! 



