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CHAPTER XII. 



VERSAILLES. 



This being one of the most celebrated gardens in the world 

 it behoves us to examine it somewhat in detail — were we, how- 

 ever, to treat of it in proportion to its real merits as a garden, 

 a very small amount of space would suffice. Let us pass 

 through the vast stone courtyard and take up our position 

 near the garden front of the palace. Standing near the walls, 

 looking over the gardens, and following the vista of the 

 canal into the low country beyond, the eye first rests on a 

 vast spread of gravel, some marble margins of great water 

 basins, sundry protuberances from the level of the water, 

 and away in the distance an effect like that afforded by a 

 suburban canal in a highly practical and unlovely country. 

 A few Lombardy Poplars help this remote vista, but the 

 effect of the whole is from this point of view lamentable. 

 To the right of the palace there is a rather pleasing garden, 

 with big box-edgings, clipped conical Yews and other trees, 

 and numerous statues well shown against dense woods of 

 Horse-chestnut trees. To the left there is one of those 

 spreads of gravel, grass, a few stumpy clipped Yews, &c, 

 generally known as geometrical gardens, the Horse-chestnut 

 groves starting up rather abruptly and relieving the whole 

 so as to render it tolerable. Advancing from the palace, the 

 lower terrace and its surroundings come into view, and the 

 effect improves. The faces of the terrace walls are hedged 

 with green ; the flower borders are somewhat after the 

 fashion of those at the Tuileries, and surrounded by a line 

 of well-grown Orange trees. Above the terrace walls Yew 

 trees are planted and clipped very regularly ; in the centre 

 there is a fine and costly fountain, and the dense groves of 

 trees near at h nd again save the scene from bald formality, 



