.The Public Gardens and Parks of Paris. 91 



The Luxembourg Garden. 



This beautiful old garden, the favourite resort for many years of 

 the Parisians of the left bank, has lately been sadly pulled about, 

 much to the indignation of the Parisian public and journalists j but 

 it is stiU a pretty garden. Geometrical gardens are rarely capable 

 of affording any prolonged interest or refreshing beauty ; very rarely 

 so much so as that of the Luxembourg. Before the recent altera- 

 tions there was a good botanic garden — an irregular sort of English 

 garden, which the French call the "never to be forgotten nursery" 

 — and much miscellaneous interest now past away. A.t present 

 matters are much more concentrated, and we shall find far less to 

 speak of than of old, but yet enough to make the place worth a 

 short notice. 



The graceful way in which the French use the common ivy is 

 pretty well exemplified in these gardens near the fountain built by 

 Catherine de Medicis. Stretching from this fountain there is a long 

 water-basin, a walk on each side of that bordered with plane trees, 

 which meeting overhead make a long leafy arch, so that the effect 

 of the fountain group at the end, representing Polyphemus discover- 

 ing Acis and Galatea, is very fine. Its effect is of course height- 

 ened by the leafy canopy of planes, but very much more so by the 

 way in which the ivy and Virginian creeper are made to form 

 graceful wreaths from tree to tree. Between each tree the Irish 

 ivy is planted, and then trained up in rich graceful wreaths, so as 

 to join the tree at about eight feet from the ground. At about a 

 foot or so above the ivy another and almost straight wreath of Vir- 

 ginian creeper is placed, and the effect of these two wreaths from 

 tree to tree is quite charming. The wreaths seem to fall from the 

 piUar-like stems of the plane-trees rather than to grow from the 

 space beneath them, the bottom of the lower wreath resting on the 

 earth. An adoption of this plan would add verdure and grace to 

 many a formal grove, bare and naked-looking about the base. 

 Another thing right weU done here during the past year was the 

 arrangement of vases. Instead of luitiping them with flat round- 



