Chap. XIV.] THE GARDENS OP VBESAILLES. 219 



Not only are the trees themselves robbed of all individual beauty 

 or character, but many places are spoiled by their presence. 

 Frequently the trees become hideous from disease consequent 

 upon mutilation ; and what they are in " perfection " may be 

 seen by the accompanying " model " tree figured (see p. 216) in 

 one of the best French books on arboriculture. 



No necessity for this clipping exists. When trees are planted 

 in close lines to form a shady avenue, their natural tendency is 

 to form a beautiful and, though formal, picturesque arch, so that 

 clipping them to obtain this is a futile barbarism. Do we want 

 to prevent them spreading forth and filling the streets with their 

 great wide heads ? If so, we may select trees almost pillar-like 

 in their habit, as the Lombardy Poplar, the fastigiate Acacia, and 

 various trees of similar habit. Do we require them flat-headed 

 and low, so that while shading the hot street they may not 

 darken all the windows ? If so, we have the Paulownia, of great 

 shading power, and fine as a street tree on dry soil, without a 

 disposition to mount much higher than the mutilated Limes so 

 commonly seen. There are also the excellent Catalpa and the 

 common and round-headed Acacias, which do not rise higher 

 naturally than the tortured trees. No lover of trees or gardens 

 will regret that this miserable practice is now nearly discontinued 

 with us. We have our walls and pillars, and pyramids of verdure, 

 but happily the branchlets that form them know not the shears. 

 We may, indeed, yet see for ourselves, in the few places where 

 clipping and shearing are still carried on, how wretched is the efi'ect. 

 In the case of a very old garden, where this system was in fashion 

 many years ago, it is permissible perhaps to continue the old idea 

 in our own time, but it is surely absurd to permit a trace of it in 

 modern gardens. Apart from the question of taste, or rather of 

 our right to deform beautiful natural objects, there is to be con- 

 sidered the great amount of not unskilled labour necessary to 

 carry out this absurd practice. 



As if to contrast with all these decrepit avenues and monstrous 

 achievements of the bill-hook, there is a grand avenue of old 

 and very tall Lombardy Poplars near the gardens of the Little 

 Trianon, an illustration of which, here given, shows how we may 

 have, at least, noble walls of verdure without clipping or 

 mutilating one leaf or shoot. It will also serve to show how 



