THE 



PARKS AND GARDENS OF PARIS. 



OHAPTEE I. 



The Bois de Boulogne. 



If there be any aim more worthy 

 of a national botanic garden 

 than another, it is surely the 

 expression of the beauty of the 

 vegetable world ; but the botan- 

 ists at the Jardin des Plantes 

 have so arranged matters there 

 that all who visit it in the hope 

 of seeing a fair garden will be 

 disappointed. So we had better 

 follow the world to the Bois 

 de Boulogne. There we break 

 quite away from the old and 

 dismal style of French garden- 

 ing, with its clipped trees and 

 unendurable monotony, and from the sad results of the open-air 

 pedantry of the botanist. The Bois is in many ways a garden such 

 as a great city like Paris should possess ; a noble system ol roads, 

 ample space, and fine sheets of water contributing to render it 

 deserving of a visit from all for whom gardens possess an interest. 

 Pains are taken to make the vegetation along the banks of the 

 artificial water diversified in character, so that at one place we 

 meet with conifers, at another rock-shrubs, at another Magnolias, 



