68 AMERICAN SOCIETY OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS 



passed. Whether they are placing a relief on a wall or laying down the lines of a drive- 

 way in the Bois de Boulogne with a border of rough stones, there is always a sweep about 

 it, a feeling for grace and propriety and what I might call esthetic logic that shows them 

 to be professional artists to the backbone — not amateurs. They are always logical, too logi- 

 cal, perhaps, in fact. After a while a certain tedium begins to show itself through the 

 fascination, and we begin to wonder whether Paris could not, in time, actually become 

 monotonous, if it were not for the work done before the High Renaissance, the glorious 

 churches and the astonishing chateaux beginning with Blois and Chambord. I read some- 

 where the other day that Diderot says that the French judge everything with their head. 

 This is true, and truer now than then. They must be logical, and they don't know how to 

 make successful mistakes. They seem unable to feel the charm of unreasonableness, and 

 there is a certain coldness and lack of vitality about their work in consequence. 



We consider Paris the art-center of the world, and send our promising young men 

 and women in swarms to be made over and polished up so that students there are now 

 divided into two classes: The others and the Americans who seem to be taking more 

 than their share of the honors. Some of them come back and directly or indirectly are 

 the cause of many deplorable things — acres of gross and blatant stone work in this very 

 town in which the French crudity and coarseness is exaggerated, and its grace and fineness 

 omitted. But our best fellows seem to me to go there and absorb most of what is best 

 in French design, and to come back and produce stuff that, after all, is American. As 

 we are a composite race, made up of people from almost all countries, and are yet devel- 

 oping a national type, I hope in time that we shall take the best we can find from other 

 countries, and, through our own consciousness, develop it into an art, that will be, perhaps, 

 better than any of them and truly national. 



In the subsequent discussion Mr. Parsons said that M. Vacherot was apologetic for most of the 

 Paris parks; he seemed to think that they sacrifice too much to giving the French people what they want. 

 In an experience of twenty-five years in the parks, Mr. Parsons had come to believe that the people do 

 not require bedding. He did not remember one letter asking for it. 



Mr. Caparn said that everything was done with a French touch, and looks better than the same 

 thing would here. For instance, shrubberies bordered with lines of bedding plants so arranged as to give a 

 firm line on the lawn and to merge into the mass of foliage behind. It looks stiff and bad, but neat and gay. 

 Gorgeous color-effects gained everywhere by oval flower-beds made in tumors on the lawn, well done in 

 themselves, but making it difficult to find a well-balanced subject for the camera. All partly redeemed by 

 the invincible French instinct for technique, the power to foresee a result, and get it with a sure touch. 

 This is found in the lines of roads, the cement borders of the lake in Buttes Chaumont park, and every- 

 where else. The most varied and interesting park is that of Buttes Chaumont. Before the forties it was a 

 disused stone quarry, the resort of criminals and other unpleasant people. 



Mr. Leavitt said that the Luxembourg Gardens were mainly children's playgrounds. There are heavy 

 shade trees, mainly horse-chestnuts, with gravel and sand underneath, so that children can dig and play 

 in the shade. The waterfall in the Bois de Boulogne is a pretty good bluff, the only way to make one if 

 there had to be a waterfall there. 



Mr. Greenleaf kept his eyes open in Paris for good work, and found it strangely absent. Paris is a good 

 place to study design in general, but the particular kind of design used by landscape architects is conspic- 

 uous by its absence. 



Mr. Olmsted was told by M. Andrfe of a scheme of decorating the great walls of rocks in the Buttes 

 Chaumont with rock-plants in little pockets, excavated. After a few years they were all crowded out by 

 English ivy, probably with a better effect. The logic of the French mind does not show in the waterfall 

 in the Bois de Boulogne. The water falls from a kind of rock built up artificially. 



Mr. Langton thought that the Paris parks were not designed to have the masses of bedding-plants 

 one sees there. 



