Chap. V.] THE TUILBEIBS GAEDENS. 83 



these little gardens, like grass everywhere in Paris, are green and 

 fresh at all seasons. The secret of this is, repeated waterings 

 whenever the natural rainfall does not serve to keep it as fresh 

 as June leaves. 



Passing through the great court of the Louvre, and out at the 

 eastern side, we see the garden of the Louvre, which is simply a 

 railed-in space, laid out with the usual well-kept grass, round- 

 headed hushes of Lilac, Ivy edgings, evergreen shrubs here and 

 there, and flowers, at all seasons. Much of this garden was once 

 covered with old buildings and streets — even the great square 

 just spoken of was once packed with alleys : improvements have, 

 however, swept all those things away, and on every side the 

 buildings stand free — very unlike some public edifices in London, 

 which are not easily to be found. 



In the gardens of the Louvre, the system of planting shrubs 

 and flowers is the monotonous one of repeating the same thing 

 everywhere — Lilac-bushes, flowers and all — without any efibrt at 

 . variety. In short, it is a successful attempt at making living 

 things as interesting as the slates on a roof. It is as if all the 

 pictures in the Louvre consisted of copies. of a few popular works. 

 It would be easy to pursue a very difl'erent system ; to make the 

 plants and shrubs out of-doors as varied as the pictures indoors, 

 added ta which the plants would possess life and change. But 

 while men have learnt to use pigments to a good end in art, few 

 think as yet of using the living plants or shrubs in any but a 

 formal inartistic manner. 



The Tuderits Gardens. 



In this, one of the most famous of gardens, the stupidity of 

 the Le Notre or Versailles style of laying out grounds is more 

 apparent than in perhaps any other : Orange-trees in ugly tubs, 

 clipped trees, broad wastes of gravel, dying over-crowded trees, 

 gigantic water-basins, are some of the most evident vices of the 

 system pursued here. 



There are many ways of wasting money in gardens, but few 

 worse than growing trees in tubs. Consider the enormous expense 

 incurred by those lines of old Orange-trees in the gardens of the 

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