GARDENS OF THE LOUVRE AND THE TUILERIES. 15 



Fig. 8. 



dens, public and private ! Every one of them has cost 

 more to rear to a condition that is presentable than the 

 education of a surgeon or barrister, and all in order to pro- 

 duce a deep round tuft of not very healthy green leaves at 

 the end of a black stem seven feet high or thereabouts. 

 Costly tubs that rot periodically ; costly storing in large 

 conservatories in winter ; costly 

 carriage from the house to 

 open garden, and from open gar- 

 den to house, and all to no good 

 purpose whatever. The foliage 

 differs not at all, or in but a 

 trifling degree, from evergreens 

 common in our shrubberies ; 

 the clipped head of green is far 

 inferior to that afforded by the 

 hardy and elegant spineless B,o- 

 binia, the flowers are few or 

 none, the whole thing is a relic 

 of barbarism, and as such should 

 be excluded from the tasteful 

 and well- arranged garden. The 

 kind of effect they produce is 

 afforded in a far higher degree 

 by perfectly hardy subjects. 



But an orange is an orange : and suppose we wish to 

 have a little grove of them ? Then make the grove at once, 

 and, by planting them in an elegant conservatory, grow 

 them ten times as well and ten times as cheaply as you can 

 by this absurd process of carrying in and out, and never 

 withal seeing them in good condition. What a potato is 

 without tubers, an orange is minus flowers and fruit. By 

 planting them in a conservatory you may enjoy all the 

 beauty of leaves, flowers, and fruit — by carrying out of 

 doors, hoping thereby to embellish what you only disfigure, 

 you enjoy nothing but imperfectly healthy leaves. The 

 conservatory must exist to hold them in any case, and one 

 only big enough to contain, say half those in this garden, 

 would, if planted with orange trees, afford the Parisians 



Group in the Tuileries Gardens. 



