38 



HISTORY OF GARDENING. 



PART I. 



172. With regard to the present state of landscape-gardening in France, the royal gar- 

 dens, the Tuilleries, Versailles, St. Cloud, and the Trianons, are still kept up in a 

 respectable style. Ermenonville is in possession of the son of its creator, who, being 

 friendly to the Buonaparte family, was made a president during the reign of a hundred 

 days, and is consequently at present not in favor at court. The grounds are still shown 

 to strangers, but their effect, and the order in which they are kept, are far inferior to what 

 one is led to expect from the description in the Essai sur la Composition des Paysages, 

 &c. and from what, as we were informed (in 1815, and again in 1819), actually was the 

 case half a century ago. We saw no reason to admire the turf, which Sir J. E. Smith 

 informs us (Tour, &c.) had been, in 1786, about two years under the care of an intelli- 

 gent Scotch gardener, and who, he says, " assured us, and indeed what we saw con- 

 firmed it, that the superior beauty of our British grass-plots to those of other countries is 

 principally owing to management, and not to soil and climate." The lawns of Girardin, 

 and of the king in the grounds we have enumerated, are, we fear, sad proofs of the fallacy 

 of this gardener's opinion, and of the unsuitableness of dry arenaceous soils and warm 

 climates for those " velvet lawns" which are at once the greatest beauty and the charac- 

 teristic of English gardening in England. The finest lawns in and around Paris are 

 watered every summer evening, when it has not rained 

 during the day, e. g. that of the Palais Royal. 



173. In the neighbourhood of Paris are various Chinese and Eng- 

 lish gardens which might be mentioned ; what they call Chinese 

 gardens differ from their English or (as Gv Thouin calls them,) 

 natural gardens, in being still more frittered down by walks, and 

 ornamented by Chinese-looking ornaments. One of the prettiest 

 town-gardens in France, and which it is but justice to say, is un- 

 equalled by any of the kind in Britain, is that of Bourseau, in 

 Paris, (Rue Mont Blanc,) about an acre in extent. It is described at 

 length in the Horticultural Tour. 



174. Near Lyons is Hermitage, a villa of Guilliard St. Etienne, 

 much spoken of in the guides, and by French tourists. It is of small 

 extent, on the rocky umbrageous banks of the Saone, and thickly set 

 with statues, busts, rustic seats (fig. 12.), and every sort of garden or- 

 nament, with a museum. It is much too theatrical for a garden, and 

 gives more the idea of whim in the proprietor than of any thing else. 

 A situation of so much natural beauty, required at the utmost, only 

 as much art as was sufficient to mark its appropriation by man. 



175. Around Montpelier and Marseilles, there is nothing in the 

 way of landscape gardening worth mentioning. 



176. The plan of the residence of General Lomet at Agen (fig. 13.) is given by Kraft. (Plans de plus beaux 

 jardins, &c. pi. 17.) It is situated on a hilly spot bordering the river, and contains in a very small space a dwell- 

 ing-house (a), poultry-yard (b), in the pavilions of which (c, d) are the coach-houses, stables, rooms above for 

 the coachman and stable-boys, and the gardener. There is a green-house (e), cart-shed, and warehouse, let 

 off to townsmen (f), a flower-garden (g), principal entrance and avenue (h, ), temple of Flora (A'.), Roman 

 temple and bath (/), terrace covered with an arbour (m), a vine plantation trained on an arcade trollisin the 

 Italian manner (n), a terrace for orange-trees with a green-house underneath (o), parterre (p), miniature 

 fields of barley, wheat, beans, &c. (g), kitchen-garden (r), numerous monuments and statues (s, s), an 

 orchard (t), and a lake (M). Kraft says, it contains the greatest variety of picturesque views, but has 



13 



