20 THE PARKS AND GARDENS OF PARIS. [Cuap. II. 



CHAPTEE II. 



The PARC MONCEAU. 



What first excites the interest of the visitor accustomed to 

 the monotonous type of garden now so common is the variety, 

 beauty of form, and refreshing verdure which characterise this 

 garden — for it is not a park in our sense. The true garden is a 

 scene which should be so delightfully varied in all its parts — so 

 bright, so green, so freely adorned with the majesty of the tree, 

 the beauty of the shrub, the noble lines of fine-leaved plants, and 

 the minute beauty of the dwarfish ones ; so perpetually interest- 

 ing, with vegetation that changes with the days and seasons, 

 rather than stamping the scene with monotony for months ; 

 and so stored with new or rare, neglected or forgotten, curious 

 or interesting plants — that the simplest observer may feel that 

 indefinable joy which lovers of Nature derive from her charms in 

 her own fairest gardens. If any good at all is to be done by 

 means of flowers and gardens, we must give men a living interest 

 in them, and some other objects than those which can be taken in 

 by the eye in a moment. Numbers are occupied with gardening 

 as it is at present, but it cannot be doubted that a system with 

 something like an aim at true art would be sure to attract many 

 more. It is patent that there are numbers even among the 

 educated classes who take little or no interest in the garden, 

 simply because they can in few places find any real beauty or 

 character in it. 



Here it is that the phase of gardening which is known among 

 us as the subtropical, and which so much helped to open people's 

 eyes to the drawbacks of the "bedding out" so common a 

 few years ago, was first practised extensively. This system 



