18 



THE PARKS AND GARDENS OF PARIS. 



[Chap. I. 



that a happy result might be produced. If these ideas be sound 

 so far as buildings are concerned, they are equally so as regards 

 the open air. The old narrow idea that a small portion of ground 

 in a town suffices to worthily represent vegetation in a public 

 garden— the idea that we see illustrated in so many continental 

 cities, and in some dozen of our own— must be got rid of before 

 we ever see ornamental horticulture properly carried out in any 

 city. Every garden and open space may do as much towards this 

 end as any similar space of the so-called botanic garden. That 

 it should do so two things are mainly requisite — first, that the 



Essays — 

 BOIS DE BOULOGNE. 

 Line of Planes near the Mare d'Autenil^ s/iowing scrubby wood and croivded planting. 



garden should be laid out on a sensible plan; secondly, that it 

 should not be devoted to imitating what is done everywhere else. 

 Beautiful it might be made with every. flower or tree that those 

 who resort to it love ; but, in addition, let it show us one or more 

 families of trees, shrubs, plants, or fruits, as completely illustrated 

 as may be. It should, in fact, like a useful type of man, know 

 a little of everything and everything of something. Among 

 modern public gardens, that of the Acclimatisation Society in the 

 Bois de Boulogne shows a fair attempt to make a garden, mainly 

 zoological, satisfactory from a landscape point of view. At one 



