Notes and Gleanings. 357 



the carnival, and at other seasons of license, for all the rabble of this part of the 

 city. Issuing at midnight, or long after, from taverns and dens of debauchery, 

 they formed a sort of bacchanal procession, and, reeling to the spot where the 

 old gibbet had stood, drank and danced in a frenzied carouse till morning. 



Now, all is changed. The place has been purified of its accumulations of 

 filth, and made to contribute to tlie health and regeneration, bodily and mental, 

 of the wretched multitude who once made it the scene of their brutal orgies. 

 The work, it is true, is not yet finished ; but enough has been done to show that 

 this disgraced locality will soon be transformed into one of the most striking and 

 unique examples of landscape art in tlie world. As you issue from a labyrinth 

 of sordid streets, the object that first arrests your eye is a perpendicular cliff 

 eighty yards high, crowned with a small, columned structure of marble, in form 

 somewhat like the famous Temple of Vesta at Tivoli. This cliff is made acces- 

 sible by an iron suspension-bridge connecting it with an adjacent height, and 

 also by a lofty arched bridge of stone, which spans a neighboring ravine. Cross- 

 ing one or the other of these bridges, and following a path zigzagged in the face 

 of the rock, you reach with ease the temple at the summit. Below you is a 

 little lake, washing the foot of the cliff, enlivened with flocks of water-fowl, and 

 bordered with shrubbery and trees. The cliff rises in tall fantastic pinnacles, 

 like the spires of churches, or, in miniature, the '' needles " of the Alps ; and 

 shrubs and creepers cling in its clefts, and festoon its sides. At a little distance 

 in the rocky side of a neighboring hill yawns a huge grotto, from the roof of 

 which hang long stalactites. Near by is a "natu/al bridge," beneath which 

 foams a brook or rivulet, which, after a series of cascades, loses itself in a dark 

 ravine. The cliff, crowned with the temple, is in part a work of art ; the lake 

 at its foot supplants a filthy slough ; the grotto is mined and blasted out of the 

 solid rock ; the stalactites were brought by rail from limestone caverns, I forget 

 where ; the natural bridge and the ravine are the handiwork of man ; and the 

 torrent flows from the water-pipes of Paris : yet all is done so well, the effects 

 have been so successfully studied, and the strong natural features of the ground 

 used to such advantage, that the result is a masterpiece of landscape-gardening. 

 Masses of rhododendrons, laurels, and other evergreens, soften into the pictu- 

 resque the harsh aspects of the rocky foreground ; and the grassy slopes of the 

 surrounding hills are varied by groves and belts of shrubbery. I stop, not be- 

 cause there is not a great deal more to say, but because I have already said too 

 much. I have barely touched a subject, which, treated in all its phases, it would 

 be difficult to exhaust. F. P. 



Paris, Feb. 2, 1869. 



Do not omit to label your newly-planted trees. The nursery-man will not do 

 this so as to last forever : he has done all he can be expected to if the trees 

 reach your hand marked rightly; and, when planted, they should not only be per- 

 manently labelled, but registered in a book ; so tiiat if every label were removed, 

 the varieties would still be known. A plan of the orchard, with the name and 

 position of every tree exactly marked, will be of great interest, and, with the 

 register, will be of much value in forming your plans for the improvement of the 

 orciiard. 



