LANDSCAPE EFFECTS 85 



in the shadow of the valley. He is no longer as fresh as when he 

 started, he pays less attention to the little interesting things or the 

 greater beauties along the way, but he comes to the rock wall of the 

 peak with the concentration of energy with which a wrestler meets a 

 worthy foe. Perhaps for hours, putting all his strength into each cal- 

 culated cautious motion, he climbs from one chosen hand-hold and / 

 foot-hold to another until he reaches the summit, and is rewarded by a 

 stupendous sweep of view over rocky peak and snowfield, below which 

 the hills that hemmed in the valley of his last night's stay are mere 

 undulations in the vast expanse dominated by the peak on which he 

 stands. 



In landscape compositions created by man, sequence and mutual Effects in 

 enhancement of effects may also be found, as the calculated results of ^^y*^-*" 

 design. When the chateau of Versailles was built, with its surrounding 

 broad terraces, its elaborate pools and statuary, its great fountains, 

 its mile-long reach of artificial water, it was intentionally the expres- 

 sion of the pride and power of the King of France.* Nothing else but 

 enormous size could have conveyed this effect. Nothing but this 

 strict and pompous formality, this centering of a gigantic scheme on a 

 great palace, exactly in the heart of which was the private room of the 

 King, could have so well expressed what the design was intended to 

 express, the concentration of the wealth and power of seventeenth cen- 

 tury France in Le Roi Soleil. (See Drawing IX, opp. p. 78.) The 

 Grand Trianon, originally a retreat, was rebuilt as a residence for 

 Louis XIV, who even in his private life could not put aside his kingly 

 state. The scale of the buildings is smaller, their main arrangement 

 somewhat less rigidly axial, but they expressed merely another phase 

 of the royal magnificence which created the Chateau. (See Drawing 

 X, opp. p. 80.) The Petit Trianon was built a century later, inten- 

 tionally as a place for escape from the overpowering conventions and 

 restrictions of the court. In its design, as in its decoration, it is 

 dainty, delicate, intimate, almost a play-house rather than a dwelling, 

 but still a queen's play-house, built without consideration of cost but 

 only of the effect desired. (See Drawing XI, opp. p. 82.) The 

 Hameau — in the midst of the "English Garden" which was itself a 



'• Cf. Chapter IV, p. 42. 



