96 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 so 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 



