Garden of the Palais Royal. 643 



climbers, as in the botanic conservatory at Syon.* We will 

 not indulge in imagining what might be done in laying out 

 and planting the garden, thus enclosed ; which, when finished, 

 we would, of course, have open to all the world, as the Palais 

 Royal is at present. It should be properly lighted with gas, 

 enlivened by fountains, and peopled with exotic birds and 

 insects, kept from escape (when the windows were opened) by 

 wire netting thrown over the roof, and by double doors at the 

 different entrances. On the occasion of great national fetes, 

 bands of music might be introduced ; and at all times there 

 might be demonstrators of botany and natural history, serving 

 also as curators to answer scientifically the enquiries of the 

 curious. Every plant and tree might have its name and 

 other particulars affixed, as in the garden of the Horticultural 

 Society. The shops in the Palais Royal would remain, and 

 business would be transacted in them as at present. All the 

 ■difference would be that the temperature would be milder. 

 The birds and insects would shun the crowd in the colonnade, 

 and keep to the centre of the garden, as being the part the 

 most umbrageous and retired. 



The present head of the French government being, as a pri- 

 vate individual, immensely rich, he might form such a garden 

 and present it to the people, on whom it certainly would not 

 be lost. We should be proud to assist (gratis of course) in 

 forming the plan. The time is not yet come for the people to 

 form such a garden for themselves : but, as exotic scenes of 

 this kind must in all countries, by all people who have en- 

 joyed them, be felt as a great luxury; and as whatever is 

 ardently desired by a whole people is certain of being ob- 

 tained ; such gardens will, we have no doubt, be eventually 

 found in all the great cities in the world. We have seen the 

 attempts of Catharine and Potemkin, which were certainly 

 nothing to what may now be done, but still something, rela- 

 tively to the times in which they were produced. Tropical 

 gardens will be formed in the capitals of the kingdoms of the 

 temperate and frigid zones % and temperate and frigid gardens 

 in the torrid zone. New and easy methods of abstracting heat 

 from air, water, and earth will, by and by, render it as easy to 

 produce the latter, as it is now to construct the former. The 

 idea, at least, is in perfect accordance with the progress of 

 improvement; which consists, first, in creating enjoyments of 



* A plan and description of the above conservatory will, we hope, soon 

 appear in this Magazine, with the approbation of His Excellency the Duke 

 of Northumberland ; and the same plan, including all the details of the 

 stove apparatus, will also appear on a large scale in an early Part of Illus- 

 trations of Landscape-Gardening and Garden Architecture* 



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