OUR CITY GARDENS 



5 

 It will, perhaps, be said that this harmony is easy 



enough to realize when we have to do with styles of architec- 

 ture so marked as are those of the French seventeenth- and 

 eighteenth-century elevations or of the Dutch and Flemish 

 houses. But, in the presence of our modern five- or six- 

 storied buildings, in which all the styles mingle and clash, 

 what relations are we to establish between their incessant con- 

 tradictions and the unfortunate garden that has to agree with 

 them? This is just the problem which people have hardly 

 studied, which I do not pretend to solve, but to which I would 

 simply call the attention of those who hold in their hands the 

 grace, the beauty, the charm and the health of our large towns. 



6 

 Everybody knows the Pare Monceau. In the eyes 

 of many people, it constitutes the most perfect and 

 luxurious type of the urban garden. Thanks to its extent, 

 which is quite exceptional and but rarely found in the 

 centre of a town, it shows us the English garden under its 

 most advantageous and seductive aspect. There is no doubt 

 that, with its cool lawns, its ornamental water, its elegant 

 arcade, its wonderful flower-beds, its wide, undulating, sanded 



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I 



