THE PARC MONCEAU. 49 



some practical men. 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 they are 

 exotics, unless indeed you wish to contrast healthy beauty 

 with ragged ugliness. In the Pare Monceau there is usually 

 a group of Musa Ensete worth making a journey to see, and 

 masses of Wigandia, Canna, and such Solanums as Warce- 

 wiczii, that are worthy of association with it ; but I have 

 also seen there beds of Begonias without a good leaf or a 

 particle of beauty — 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 a garden where its omission would leave almost 

 nothing to be desired, is too bad. In some respects this 

 park is really unequalled, and therefore one regrets the more 

 to see these blemishes, which let us hope will not be repeated. 

 What first excites the admiration of the visitor used to 

 the monotonous and highly-toned type of garden now seen 

 so much with us is the variety, beauty of form, and refresh- 

 ing verdure which characterize this garden — good qualities 

 that are so often absent in too many of our own. The true 

 garden is a scene which should be so delightfully varied in 

 all its parts — so bright, so green, so freely adorned with the 

 majesty of the tree, the beauty of the shrub, the noble lines 

 of the fine-leaved plant, the minute beauty of the dwarfer 

 plants of this world ; so perpetually interesting, with vegeta- 

 tion that changes with the days and seasons, rather than 

 puts the stamp of monotony on the scene for months ; and 

 so stored with new or rare, neglected or forgotten, curious 

 or interesting plants — that the simplest observer may feel 

 that indefinable joy which lovers of nature derive from her 

 charms amidst such scenes, but which few, except those 

 of a high degree of sensitiveness and power of expres- 

 sion, like Shelley, can give utterance to. It would be 

 teaching him to use the words of Goethe — 



" To recognise and love 

 His brothers in still grove, 

 Or air or stream." 



