j!60 HORTICULTURAL TOUR. 



pleasure-grounds, which were intended to be in the Eng- 

 lish style; and in prosecution of his plans, he took in 

 a part of the Bois de Boulogne. The French were, at 

 this time, quite careless about the state of their garden- 

 walks. Mr Blaikie had those of Bagatelle properly con- 

 structed with gravel ; but the gardeners obstinately de- 

 clined the labour of cleaning and rolling them enjoined by 

 the English planner, and suffered them continually to be- 

 come covered with weeds and worm-casts. Ten years af- 

 terwards, when Bagatelle was nearly in its glory, the course 

 of events caused it suddenly to change its master ; and it 

 then became the favourite seat of revolutionary fetes. Af- 

 ter the lapse of five-and- twenty years more, it has reverted 

 to its original owner ; and notwithstanding the dilapida- 

 tions it had unavoidably suffered, it is still a beautiful place. 

 In 1784, Mr Blaikie was employed at Mouceaux, the seat 

 of the Duke of Orleans near Paris, particularly in con- 

 structing splendid hot-houses in the garden ; but these 

 were much injured in the progress of the revolution. He 

 afterwards planned St Leu at Taverny, in the Valley of 

 Montmorency, for the same nobleman, — a place still in pret- 

 ty good repair. And in 1786, he laid out Raincy, in the 

 Forest of Bondy, for the same extravagant personage. 

 This place was greatly destroyed during the revolutionary 

 times ; it is now the property of M. Livry. The Duke, 

 it is well known, by his expensive magnificence, squander- 

 ed his vast fortune, and, in order to retrieve it, formed the 

 strange resolution of converting his town residence, the Par 

 lais Royal, into shops, cafes, gaming-houses, &c. A con- 

 siderable debt still remains due to Mr Blaikie by the Or- 

 leans Family ; and he has a claim of reparation on the 

 French Government, for a robbery having been committed 

 on Ins house during the revolutionary period, when the 



