Chap. XIV.] THE GARDENS OP VERSAILLES. 195 



It is perfectly true that there are some positions where an 

 intrusion of architecture and embankments into the garden is 

 justifiable, now and then even necessary. The misfortune is that 

 they are often said to be so when such is not the case. The best 

 terrace-gardens in Europe are those built where the nature of the 

 ground calls for them, usually where the ground is steep and 

 rugged ; it is in positions like these that they are most wanted in 

 this country. There is no code of taste resting on any solid 

 foundation which proves that garden or park should have any 

 extensive stonework or geometrical arrangement. Many instances 

 could be given to prove that the natural or nearly natural 

 disposition of the most monotonous ground is preferable to the 

 great majority of expensive geometrical gardens. Let us then 

 use as few joil-cloth or^_rpet_paiteins_-aiul_asJiitla.atonework as 

 possible in our gardens, and arrange them sojthat when our sunny 

 season does come^^they; may be full of_life„and^jchange, and of such 

 beauty as is nowhere to be found in the deadly formalism of 

 Versailles .and garde as like it. 



In considering this kind of gardening we have a capital 

 example in the case of the Crystal Palace, in the region of the 

 great fountain-basins, where a more dismal impression is received 

 than in any part of Versailles, though the upper terrace at the 

 Palace illustrates some of the best features of the formal system. 

 But at both the Palace and Versailles the vast expense for a poor 

 theatrical effect is not the most regrettable matter ; that, perhaps, 

 is the mass of formal, dirty water-basins, with their spouting 

 pipes and crumbling margins ; for the purse that creates such 

 delights frequently fails, or at any rate gets tired of the constant 

 expenditure needed, to keep the stone-cutter's work and geometry 

 in good order. There is nothing more melancholy than the walls, 

 fountain-basins, clipped trees, and long canals, of places like 

 these, not only because they utterly fail to satisfy in them- 

 selves, but as constantly suggesting wasted effort and riches 

 worse than lost. There are, from Versailles to Oaserta, a great 

 many ugly gardens in Europe, but at Sydenham is to be found 

 the greatest modern example of the waste of enormous means in 

 making hideous a fine piece of ground. It has been called a work 

 of genius, but it was only the realisation of a misguided ambition 

 to outdo another sad monument of great means prostituted to a 



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