i;8 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS 



horizon, his taste as an architect could bestow immediate termina- 

 tion. His buildings, his seats, his temples, were more the works 

 of his pencil than of his compasses. We owe the restoration of 

 Greece and the diffusion of architecture to his skill in landscape. 

 But of all the beauties he added to the face of this beautiful 

 country, none surpassed his management of water. Adieu to 

 canals, circular basons, and cascades tumbling down marble steps, 

 that last absurd magnificence of Italian and French villas. The 

 forced elevation of cataracts was no more. The gentle stream 

 was taught to serpentize seemingly at its pleasure, and where 

 discontinued by different levels, its course appeared to be con- 

 cealed by thickets properly interspersed, and glittered again at 

 a distance where it might be supposed naturally to arrive. Its 

 borders were smoothed, but preserved their waving irregularity. 

 A few trees scattered here and there on its edges sprinkled the 

 tame bank that accompanied its mseanders; and when it dis- 

 appeared among the hills, shades descending from the heights 

 leaned towards its progress, and framed the distant point of light 

 under which it was lost, as it turned aside to either hand of the 

 blue horizon. On Modern Gardening. 



CLAUDE Receiver -General of Finances, Member of the French Academy and of the 



HENRI Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture, author of poem on ' The Art of 



WATELET, Painting* and ' Essay on Gardens' ; a critic of the type of the Comte de 

 (1718-1786). Caylus. He created the Moulin-Joli (near Paris] of which the Prince de Ligne 

 wrote : 



* Void un lieu peut-2tre encore plus selon mon cceur (qu'Ermenonville), et 

 plus pres de Paris. Cest en quittant un jour son vain tourbillon, qu errant a 

 taventure, le long de la Seine, je le perdis de vtie au Moulin-Joli, et que je me 

 trouvai moi-meme, car ce nest qu'aux champs qtion peut se trouver. Qui que 

 vous soyez, si vous n'etes pas des c&urs endurcis, asseyez-voiis entre les bras d'un 

 saule, au Moulin-Joli, sur le bord de la riviere. Lisez, voyez et pleurez, ce ne 

 sera pas de tristesse, mats d'une sensibility delicieiise. Le tableau de votre ame 

 viendra s'offrir a vous. . . . Allez-y, incrtdules. . . . Mtditez sur les inscrip- 

 tions que le gout y a dicttes. Mtditez avec le sage, soupirez avec Vamant, et 

 btnissez Watelet: 



