I 
I 
96 CHILDREN AND FLOWERS. 
I Well may Madame de Genlis, recurring to 
the scenes of her early life, write thus :—Oh, 
how much sweeter is it to recall to my mind 
j the walks and sports of my happy childhood, 
than the pomp and splendour of the palaces 
I have since inhabited ! All the courts, once so 
brilliant, are now faded. All the projects which 
were then built with so much confidence, are 
become chimeras. The impenetrable future has 
cheated alike the security of princes, and the 
ambition of courtiers. Versailles is dropping 
into ruins ; the delicious gardens of Chantilly, 
of Villers-Coterets, of Sceaux, of Isle-Adam, 
are destroyed. I should now look in vain for 
the vestiges of that frail grandeur which I once 
admired there ; but I should find the banks of 
the Loire as smiling as ever, the meadows of 
St. Aubin as full of violets and lilies of the val¬ 
ley, and its woods loftier and fairer. There 
are no vicissitudes for the eternal beauties of 
I nature ; and while, amidst blood-stained revolu- 
I tions, palaces, marble columns, statues of bronze, 
' and even cities themselves disappear, the simple 
