358 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS 



commonly cited as the acme of the artificial, and absorbed from 

 first to last some eight millions of pounds, its fountains at one 

 time having cost ^3000 to set working for half an hour. 1 



But it was not all Le Notre's fault : his master had the knack 

 of constantly changing his mind about the designs. Of Le Notre's 

 naivete of manners and familiarity with his royal Master and the 

 Pope amusing stories are told. Le Notre was educated as an 

 Architect, and is said to have found his earliest garden inspiration 

 at Rueil. His first actual experience in rural design was obtained 

 at Vaux le Villars (now Vaux Praslin) and the result so delighted 

 the King, that he made him Comptroller General of Buildings 

 and Gardens. For Madame Maintenon he worked at her Convent 

 Garden at Noisy-le Roi, where he formed the Grand Canal out of 

 a marsh. 



A perspective view of Versailles is here given, showing the extent 

 and plan on a minute scale, from an engraving by Perelle. 



Let not the visitor to Versailles at the present day imagine that 

 he is gazing upon Le Notre's creation there is not so much of Le 

 Notre left there, as there is of Phidias in the Parthenon at Athens. 

 If the reader doubt this, let him turn to M. Ph. Gille's historical 

 account of the Gardens, 2 or better still to Gautier's 'comparative' 

 Retrospect in his c Tableaux de Siege,' the last book he published. 

 There he will read one by one the devastations of Reformers, Re- 

 storers, and Modernisers, no doubt all men of taste and 'improvers' 

 according to the ideas of the time : so that what was once a whole, 

 a great and magnificent unit, is now a defaced and disintegrated 

 fraction. 



Le Notre's Garden seems made to exhibit to the utmost the 

 social characteristics of the French people of the Grand Century. 

 They extend their houses into their gardens, which are necessarily 

 architectural : open-air drawing and dining rooms as shown in their 

 very nomenclature. Their groves are cut into Salons and Salks 

 de Bal) their lawns rases like their heads, and paths Men peignes 

 like their periwigs ; as lovers of the stage and drama, their very 



1 In their curtailed form in 1816, ^200 an hour. The difference is typical. 



2 'La France Artistique et Monumentale.' 



