14 



other change in the actors and decorations of this 

 great drama. Another hand now wields the sceptre 

 of Lewis, Napoleon, and Charles X., and another fam- 

 ily of royal exiles are wandering in beggary through 

 all the courts of Europe. In the mean time the 

 gardens of Versailles have annually bloomed as freshly 

 as before, and the nightingales that frequent them 

 have sung as gaily as if nothing had happened. These 

 violent and sudden changes in the political world, 

 contrasted with the steadiness and order that distin- 

 guish the course of nature, may serve, perhaps, to 

 recommend to us as our chief pursuits and pleasures 

 those that consist in the study of her works and the 

 enjoyment of her beauties. 



When Lewis XIV. was at the height of his power, 

 he made it a part of his magnificence, — as his succes- 

 sor. Napoleon, afterwards did, — to place one of his 

 family upon the throne of Spain. Philip V. after es- 

 tablishing himself in his new kingdom, was ambitious 

 to imitate the splendor of the royal residences of that 

 which he had left, and undertook to create a new 

 Versailles, on the summit of the Guadarrama moun- 

 tain, at the distance of about sixty miles from Madrid, 

 and at the height of three thousand six hundred feet 

 above the level of the sea. This freak of fancy cost 

 the Spanish people forty millions of dollars, and pro- 

 duced, as its result, the palace and gardens of La 

 Granja, or, as they are often called, from the name of 

 the neighboring village, St. Ildefonso. Notwithstand- 

 ing the enormous expense at which they were con- 

 structed, there is little in the architecture of the build- 

 ings, or the general appearance of the place, to remind 



