VERSAILLES. 



243 



as tliey are ever accompanied by a day-gliost of wasted 

 effort — of riclies worse than lost. 



In connexion with the Crystal Palace one thinks of 

 ruined shareholders ; and with V ersailles, of the enormous 

 sums wrung from an oppressed people^ and put to such a 

 miserable use^ that one can scarcely regret a wild blood- 

 dance of revolution came and put an end to it all. And 

 this was the kind of good effected with the money so hardly 

 wrung from starving millions ! It was merely burying 

 wealth — indeed^ it might have been better to have buried 

 it^ for many would prefer the naked earth to these gyra- 

 tions^ which must be kept in repair at great cost or they 

 become intolerable even to their builders and designers. 



When a private individual indulges in expensive fancies, 

 he has small influence to injure any one but himself ; but 

 when the place is a public one^, and set up as an example 

 of all that is admirable, then, in addition to the first wasteful 

 expenditure, we have an object hurtful to the public taste, 

 and sowing the seed of its ugliness all over the country. 



It may be said that our taste in England is suflSciently 

 assured against this ; but it is not so. I have known those 

 whose lawns were or might readily be made the most 

 beautifal of gardens, ruin them, and for the mere sake of 

 having a terraced garden. There is a modern castle in 

 Scotland where the embankments are piled one above 

 another till the thing looks as if the Chinese who carve the 

 ivory balls had been invited to make a corresponding ar- 

 rangement in the fortification style. Were it a matter of 

 trifling cost, or which could be easily abolished or even 

 avoided, it would not be worthy our attention ; but being 

 so expensive that it may curtail for years the legitimate 

 outlay for a garden, and prevent expenditure in live interest 

 rather than in slow crumbling monotony, too much cannot 

 be urged against it. The style was in doubtful taste in 

 climates and positions more suited to it than those of 

 northern France and England ; but he who would now 

 adopt it in an age when civilization has set its formal brand 

 npon everything, and in the presence of the inexhaustible 

 and magnificent collections of trees and plants which we 



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