06 CHILDREN AND FLOWERS. 



Well may MADAME DE GENLIS, recurring to 

 the scenes of her early life, write thus : " Oh, 

 how much sweeter is it to recall to my mind 

 the walks and sports of my happy childhood, 

 than the pomp and splendour of the palaces 

 I have since inhabited ! All the courts, once so 

 brilliant, are now faded. All the projects which 

 were then built with o much confidence, are 

 become chimeras. The impenetrable future has 

 cheated alike the security of princes, and the 

 ambition of courtiers. Versailles is dropping 

 into ruins ; the delicious gardens of Chantilly, 

 of Villers-Coterets, of Sceaux, of Isle-Adam, 

 are destroyed. I should now look in vain for 

 the vestiges of that frail grandeur which I once 

 admired there ; but I should find the banks of 

 the Loire as smiling as ever, the meadows of 

 St. Aubin as full of violets and lilies of the val- 

 ley, and its woods loftier and fairer. There 

 are no vicissitudes for the eternal beauties of 

 nature ; and while, amidst blood-stained revolu- 

 tions, palaces, marble columns, statues of bronze, 

 and even cities themselves disappear, the simple 



