12 
THE FLORIST. 
their dry and warm climate, on which the maturation of the wood 
entirely depends. The forest trees are wretched objects, and after the 
magnificent specimens we have at Nuneham, only excited my disgust. 
I saw a line of trees recently planted (I was told by a Scotchman, who, 
I should think, had never heard of Sir Henry Stuart or “ protecting 
properties ”) ; they were long flexible rods, 20 feet in height, without 
branches, but staked in all directions. In the Luxembourg gardens and 
the Champs Elysees they are little better. The demand for firewood 
and barricades must tend much to the diminution of these beautiful 
natural objects. The Louvre is truly magnificent as a building, and 
its treasures of art are quite commensurate with it. The Hotel de 
Ville is also a very fine edifice. In the evening all the world seemed 
to be out enjoying themselves ; balls, theatres, and other amusements 
were in the ascendant. 
The following morning I rose with the first peep of day and went to 
Fontainbleau by railway, the distance from Paris being 40 miles. 
On my arrival there I went first to see the kitchen garden and 
pleasure ground, and received the most polite attention from the head 
gardener there, whose courtesy and extreme civility I have great 
pleasure in recording. The palace is an enormous pile of most irregular 
building, excepting that its road frontage is in the form of half the 
letter H. I am informed that the interior is very beautiful, but as I 
was more keenly alive to natural than to the artificial beauty I did 
not see through it, but preferred visiting the forest. The garden front 
of the palace is very pretty, and there are some really fine trees here, 
with a charming piece of water. What flowers there were here were 
Dahlias in gorgeous masses, having a vivid and brilliant tone of colour 
which was surpassingly beautiful. On another front there is a sunk 
panel of beds also filled with masses of Dahlias and Gladioli, which 
were really exquisite. But flowers in such perfection as these are 
especially the children of the delicious climate of Fontainbleau. In the 
lake of water there were many hundreds of prodigiously fine carp 
congregated at a spot where they are fed by visitors, and it was very 
amusing to witness their gambols and scuffles for pieces of bread. 
In the kitchen garden I saw some well grown Pines, fruited in very 
small pots proportionally; they were plunged in tan, over a chamber 
filled with fermenting dung. Of Grapes the wall of Chasselas de 
Fontainbleau, 1300 yards long and from 12 to 15 feet in height, was 
covered from top to bottom with fine bunches of this delicious fruit— 
rich, transparent, and deeply amber-coloured. Never have I seen so 
fine a sight before (it was the 20th of October). They were just 
commencing to force Alpine Strawberries, to be ripe at Christmas. 
Prince Albert Peas were just sown in a deep pit, to have sticks put to 
them; and there were immense ranges of pits for cultivating French 
Beans and Strawberries in. There were many cloches with Lettuces 
under them, and Escarolle and Cardoons seemed to be the principal 
crops of winter vegetables. The pits were furnished with flat-sided 
copper pipes, high and narrow, which are invariably used in French 
gardens in preference to iron; wood is burnt in their furnaces, and from 
the rapid manner in which copper gives off heat the fires want constant 
attention. 
