242 



VERSAILLES. 



interest of a garden^ is the fact that outdoor artistic embel- 

 lishment^ good or bad, is by no means so appropriate in 

 these cool and gusty climes as in warmer countries. Where 

 people can live out of doors the greater portion of the year, 

 and where the winter is merely a pleasant dry kind of 

 atmospheric tonic ; where the native can dine for more than 

 half the year in a bower of vines, and breathe the spices of 

 Orange trees and Magnolias — in the south of France, Spain, 

 and Italy, and all along the shores of the Mediterranean — 

 it is more desirable to have the nude form in marble in the 

 open air, independently of the fact that the lichens and 

 moss do not so soon begin to embellish the carving, or 

 grass to grow out of its interstices, in countries near the 

 sun. Leave art indoors — where, unfortunately, we must 

 content ourselves for the most part — use as few wall- 

 paper patterns and as little stonework as possible in our 

 gardens, and arrange them so that when our sunny 

 season does come they may be full of life and change, 

 and that all our efforts therein may tend to their improve- 

 ment in the right direction. 



In discussing this phase of gardening we have a capital 

 example in the case of the Crystal Palace, in the region of 

 the great fountain basins, where a more horrid impression 

 is received than in any part of Versailles, though the upper 

 terrace at the Palace illustrates the best features of the 

 system, and shows as well as anything I know of in how 

 far it may be safely adopted near a great building. But 

 both at the Palace and Versailles the vast expense for a 

 poor theatrical effect is not the most regretful of present 

 features ; that, perhaps — not to look deeply into the 

 blemishes of such positions — is the dirty, wide, change- 

 less water basins, with their squirting pipes and perhaps 

 crumbling margins ; for the purse that creates such de- 

 lights frequently fails, if it does not get tired of expendi- 

 ture that never produces the changeful beauty for which 

 the heart of man yearns. To me there is nothing more 

 appalling than the walls, fountain basins, clipped trees, and 

 long canals, &c., of such a place as Versailles, not only be- 

 cause they utterly fail to satisfy in themselves, but inasmuch 



