The Public Gardens and Parks of Paris. 85 



Acer negundo variegata, arranged in one great oval mass, gay and 

 bright ; it is beautiful when you see some spots with single speci- 

 mens and chaste beds, every one differing from its neighbour ; and it 

 is bad indeed when you meet with about a thousand plants of one 

 variety stretched around a collection of shrubs, or flopped down in 

 one wide mass in some of those beautiful little green pieces that 

 spread out among the trees on the islands in the Bois de Boulogne. 

 In the Champs Elysees there is a deal of this gardening, and much 

 of it consists of masses of monstrous ugliness, in consequence of 

 what we may call overlumping, to produce sensational effect ; but 

 it is less observable and more artistically managed in the Pare 

 Monceau. An odd single specimen of Musa Ensete looks very fine 

 here and there, and occasionally you may see a really tasteful 

 thing — for instance, a mass of brightly and freely flowering Portu- 

 lacas surfacing beds with tall foliaged plants, &c. The Hibiscuses 

 begin in August to compensate for months of ugly stickiness by 

 showing an odd blazing bloom, beautiful here and there, while 

 Begonias and not a few other things look miserable indeed. " This 

 subtropical system will neverdo for England!" say some practicalmen. 

 The truth is, that it requires to be done very carefully in Paris, and 

 there is a great mistake made by putting out a host of tender plants 

 merely because — well, I can't say why, unless it is to contrast healthy 

 beauty with ragged ughness. Their weakness is, that like most people 

 in this world, they do not know where to stop. You have in the 

 Pare Monceau a group of Musa Ensete worth making a journey to 

 see, and groups of Wigandia, Canna, and such Solanums as Warce- 

 wiczii, that are worthy of association with it; but you also see 

 there beds of Begonias without a good leaf, let alone a particle of 

 beauty : nasty scraggy stove plants, with long crooked legs, and a 

 few tattered leaves at the top, and poor standard plants of the sweet 

 Verbena at the same time. If it were an experimental ground one 

 would not mind, of course ; but this, in gardens where its omission 

 would leave almost nothing to be desired, is almost too bad. In 

 some respects this park is really unequalled, and therefore one 

 regrets the more to see these blemishes. However, it is only fair 



