The Public Gardens and Parks of Paris. 95 



and in one bay is made a most effective stalactite cave — enor- 

 mous is the right word, for from its floor to the ceiling is about 

 sixty feet high, while it is wide and imposing in proportion. In 

 its back part above this high roof the light is let in through a 

 wide opening, showing a gorge reminding one of some of those 

 in the very tops of the Cumberland mountains, and down this 

 gorge trickles the water into the cave, ivy and suitable shrubs 

 being planted along its course above the roof of the cave; and 

 the effect is remarkably striking, though it is hardly the kind of 

 thing to be recommended for a public park. By all means let us 

 leave the luxuries of gardening out of the question, till we have 

 provided the necessaries for the population of great towns, and 

 these are green lawns, trees, and wide open streets and ways, with 

 their necessary consequence, pure air. In one of the buttes, or 

 great mounds here, they have planted joo or 600 Deodars — made 

 it a hill of deodars in fact. This is a mistake, for though Paris is 

 not as foggy as Spitalfields, nor its air as destructive to trees as that 

 of the West-end of London, it is a great city, as may be seen from 

 this park, and with many a vomiting chimney too, so that the 

 better plan would be to pay double attention to deciduous trees, 

 using only such evergreens as are certain to grow. In one wide 

 nook, perfectly sheltered on the three coldest sides, M. Andre has 

 planted a collection of subjects mostly tender in the neighbourhood 

 of Paris. From this park, the surroundings of which are by no 

 means nice-looking, you can look over nearly all Paris. The ap- 

 proach to it from the central parts is shabby for a Paris approach, 

 and on your way you may catch some idea of what Paris was 

 before the splendid improvements of the past ten years — a very 

 dirty city; but this approach, like most other things in Paris, is 

 simply tolerated til] more important things are finished. Of the 

 quick way in which they turn them out of hand there, the 

 reader can scarcely have a notion. I have seen acres of land 

 removed bodily without any fuss being made about it ; miles 

 of trees planted in the course of a single week ; old suburbs 

 blown up by hundreds of mines a day, and levelled into com- 



