256 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS 



rays of the setting sun to the hum of insects, the sound of the 

 lizards of the old wall, whom I seem to recognise as old garden 

 guests, and to whom it seems I might gossip about old times. 

 An Address to Gardeners. 



PERCY \A/E saw t ^ ie P a ^ ace an( * g ar dens of Versailles and le Grand 



SHELLEY et Petit Trianon ' The y sur P ass Fontainebleau. The 



(1792-1822). gardens are full of statues, vases, fountains, and colonnades. In 



all that essentially belongs to a garden they are extraordinarily 



deficient. The orangery is a stupid piece of expense. There 



was one orange-tree not apparently so old, sown in 1442. We 



saw also the gardens and the theatre at the Petit Trianon. The 



gardens are in the English taste and extremely pretty. Journal 



(Sept. 3, 1816). 



This shore of the Lake (Como) is one continued village, and 

 the Milanese nobility have their villas here. The union of 

 culture and the untameable profusion and loveliness of nature 

 is here so close, that the line where they are divided can hardly 

 be discovered. But the finest scenery is that of the Villa 

 Pliniana ; so called from a fountain which ebbs and flows every 

 three hours, described by the younger Pliny, which is in the 

 court-yard. 



This house, which was once a magnificent palace and is now 

 half in ruins, we are endeavouring to procure. It is built upon 

 terraces raised from the bottom of the lake, together with its 

 garden at the foot of a semi-circular precipice, overshadowed by 

 profound forests of chestnut. 



The scene from the colonnade is the most extraordinary, at 

 once, and the most lovely that eye ever beheld. On one side 

 is the mountain, and immediately over you are clusters of cypress- 

 trees of an astonishing height, which seem to pierce the sky. 

 Above you, from among the clouds, as it were, descends a water- 

 fall of immense size, broken by the woody rocks into a thousand 



