228 Notices suggested hy a Tour in Trance. 



out meat) five days out of seven is cheap living, and coffee is 

 also cheap; and these are all a Frenchman cares about at home ; 

 though, if you take him to a restaurateur's, and treat him with a 

 good dinner, it is amazing how he will enjoy the good things of 

 this life. 



Commercial Hose Nurseries in Paris. — Nothing can be more 

 insignificant, both as to size and stock, than the nurseries of the 

 commercial rose-growers near Paris : they seldom exceed one 

 acre, and more frequently contain but half that quantity of 

 ground ; in which standard roses of all heights, and dwarfs of all 

 sorts, are grown in the same rows ; presenting to a stranger an 

 inextricable mass of confusion. It would be difficult to execute 

 an order for a general good collection from any one of these 

 nurseries ; but they are so numerous, that twenty may be visited, 

 for twenty sorts of roses, with but little difficulty. I had con- 

 cluded that M. Laffay, and one or two others, whom I knew to 

 have been in our English nurseries, would have adopted, in 

 some degree, our orderly arrangement ; but they had not in the 

 least deviated from the custom of their neighbours ; and M. 

 Laffijy's little garden, of half or three quarters of an acre, was as 

 full of roses and confusion as any that I saw. 



The Cemetery of Per e la Chaise, — I was much disappointed 

 with the entrance to Pere la Chaise : it seemed an overgrown 

 nursery of Chinese arbor vitses; and, till you make your way to 

 the upper part, where the larger tombs show themselves, the 

 crowd of naked-stemmed evergreens has a miserable effect. 

 This has arisen from the injudicious mode of planting; for it 

 appears that every person may plant as many trees as he pleases 

 around the graves of his friends : consequently, four Chinese 

 arbor vitaes thus : :, or six thus : : :, are planted to hundreds 

 of tombs, forming a dreary and unpicturesque mass. Many of 

 the tombs in the upper part are decorated in much better taste : 

 a few pots of flowers are placed on them, and kept in order by 

 persons paid for that purpose. Standard plants of Robinm 

 inermis are very numerous ; but they are not pendulous and 

 graceful enough. The cypress, that appropriate tree, is not 

 very abundant; and the weeping willow is still les3 so. The 

 most pleasing tombs are those with one weeping willow at the 

 head, and flowers, or a cypress, at the foot. In a public cemetery 

 like this, planting ought to be restricted to one or two trees for 

 each grave, with flowers at liberty ; for, if planted capriciously, 

 as this has been, the light and air must be soon excluded, and 

 the tombs sought for as in a wood. I had imagined Pere la 

 Chaise to be a large picturesque expanse of turf with magnificent 

 tombs, graced by the light shadows of the weeping willow in 

 contrast with the funereal cypress. You may, then, guess my 

 disappointment in finding a wood of arbor vitses, intersected by 



J 



