Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 22, August, 1878. VariousЧитать онлайн книгу.
multicolored poppies or yellow marigolds. The sober mignonette is too great a favorite to be excluded, though it lends little to the effect. The gorgeous rhododendron is here massed in large beds, and there forms a standard tree with a formal clump of foliage and gay flowers, contrasting with the bright green of the succulent grass. The roses are by thousands in beds and lining the walks, and here are especially to be seen the standard roses for which Europe is so famous, but which do not seem to prosper with us.
Besides the flowers and flowering shrubs, a most profuse use is made of evergreens, which are removed of surprising size and forwardness of spring growth. We can form little conception from our gardens at home of the wealth, variety and exuberance of the evergreen foliage in Southern England and Northern France—the Spanish and Portuguese laurel, laurustinus, arbutus, occuba, bay, hollies in variety, tree-box, with scores of species of pines, firs, arborvitæ and yews, relieved by the contorted foliage of the auraucarias, the sombre cedar of Lebanon and the graceful deodar cedar of the Himalayas. As already remarked, the tree-growth is small, as the ground was a blank and rocky hillside two years ago, and was quarried to make a site for the garden. The tree which seems best to bear moving, and is consequently used in the emergency, is the horse-chestnut, the red and white flowering varieties being intermingled. This is perhaps the most common tree in the streets of Paris, though the plane and maple are also favorites.
BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF THE MAIN BUILDING AND ITS SURROUNDINGS.
Against the rocky scarp on the south of the garden a plantation of aloes, yuccas and cactus has been made. These are in great variety, and some of them in flower. It was especially pleasant to see the independence which the gardener has shown in placing a fine clump of rhubarb in one place where he wanted a green bunch. Some persons would have been afraid of injurious criticism in the use of so common a plant, but we all know what a vigorous, healthy green it is, and as such not to be despised by the artist in color. There are a few specialties in the way of gardening which are worth notice: one is the array of tulips planted by the city of Haarlem, and representing the municipal coat-of-arms in tulips of every imaginable color of which the plant is capable, and around the figures the words "Haarlem, Holland," in scarlet tulips on a ground of white ones.
Another novelty is the Japanese garden with its bamboo fence, the posts and door of entrance being carved with remarkable taste and boldness. The double gates are surmounted by a cock and hen in natural attitudes, which is a relief from the absurdities of their impossible storks and hideous griffins. Perhaps it shows that modern and European ideas are at work there. The flag of Japan, by the way—a red circle on a white ground—is a sensible design, and can be seen at a distance: it contrasts favorably with the dragon on a yellow ground of the Chinese pavilion. The Japanese garden has several large standard umbrellas for permanent shade, and little bamboo-fenced yards for the game chickens and the ducks. Two shrines are in the garden, and a fountain with a feeble jet issuing from a stump and falling into a little fanciful pond with small bays and promontories. On the miniature deep a walnut-shell ship might ride, and on the shoals near the bank aquatic plants are beginning to sprout, and their leaves will soon touch the opposite shore if they are not attended to.
Rather a disparagement, as a matter of taste, to the somewhat formal grace but undoubted beauty of this floral scene are the buildings which are placed here and there over the surface. However, it is these that we have come to see, for if we were in search of landscape or Dutch gardening we should find it better elsewhere. This gardening is only a setting, a frame, in which the various nations have set up their cottages and villas. The ground surface between the houses has been laid off ornamentally to please the eye and satisfy the sense of order and beauty, but is not itself the object of which we are in search. It is impossible perhaps to harmonize such an incongruous set of buildings, adapted for different climates, habits, tastes and needs. Here on the left is a large white castellated house of Algiers. It has blank walls and loopholed towers, and no suggestion of a tree or flower, but gives an idea of the land where the sand of the desert comes up to the doorstep and beggars and thieves go on horseback. On the opposite extremity, at the right, is a Chinese house with its peculiar curved roof, suggested originally, doubtless, by the Tartar tent, but having more curves and points than were ever shown by canvas or felt. In a district by themselves the readers of the Koran—or a set of people passing for such—have their Persian, Tunisian, Morocco and Turkish kiosques, and the inhabitants seem perhaps one shade cleaner than they did in Philadelphia. They are supposed, at least, to be the same, and have an exactly similar lot of rubbish and brass jewelry for sale, and oil of cassia, which they sell for the attar of the "gardens of Gul in their bloom." Next is a campanile of Sweden, and near it are the Swedish and Norwegian houses, armed against winter. Then the Japanese cottage with sides all open, mats on the floors and no furniture to speak of. Then comes a Moorish pavilion of Spain with nondescript ornaments, the bulbous domes and pinnacles supporting the flags of yellow and red—of barbaric taste, color and significance.
We have yet to notice the Italian villa, the Oriental mosque, the Swiss chalet and the log hut; also the modern pavilion with zinc roof, the thatched houses of Britain and of Normandy, the Elizabethan cottage and the English farm-house. What they lack in size they make up in variety, may be said of the greenhouses and conservatories dotted about the place. In and outside of them the marvellous skill and patience of the gardener is seen in the rigidly-formal or abnormally-directed limbs of the fruit trees. The fish-ponds and fountains are neither numerous nor large, but the aquarium may merit more extended description when completed.
Standing, sensible-looking and tasteful, in the midst of much that is trumpery, but good enough for a summer fête, and placed here not as exhibits of good taste, but of what their owners think good, rises the wooden building with skylight roof of "The Administration of Forests and Waters." It is on a beautiful knoll, and has a wooden frame with tongued and grooved panels, the whole varnished to show the natural grain of the timber. On the panels outside are arranged the tools and implements of arboriculture and forestry.
The flags of the different nations displayed upon these buildings give animation to the scene, and the glance might pass at once from this panorama to the other side of the Seine, where the scene is repeated, but for the intervention of long barnlike sheds with tile roofs which intrude themselves along the banks of the river, and quench the poetry of the fanciful and picturesque as the eye passes from the immediate foreground and seeks the magnificent façade of the Salle d'Iéna, the river front of the main building occupying the Champ de Mars. The flags of all nations are flying from the numerous minor pinnacles, while the six domes on the ends and centres of the east and west façades display the tricolor of France.
The best view of the exterior is obtained from the Trocadéro. The building itself is so large that some distance is necessary to take in the whole at a glance. The approach to it by way of the Pont d'Iéna has been marred by raising the bridge to too great a height, so that the impression in crossing the Seine is that the building stands upon low ground. Standing upon the east end of the bridge, one cannot see the base on the other side of the river, which suggests descent and dwarfs the building. The bridge retains its colossal statuary, each of the four groups consisting of an unmounted man and a horse. They respectively represent a Greek, Roman, Gaul and Arab. The bridge was erected to commemorate the victory over the Prussians in 1806, and Blücher, who had his head-quarters at St. Cloud in 1815, threatened to blow it up. After crossing the bridge we find ourselves reaching the work-a-day world. On the left are represented the foundries and workshops of Creuzot, Chaumont and Serrenorri. Near by is a model of the observatory of Mount Jouvis and an annex of the state tobacco-factory of France.
The building on the Champ de Mars is 2132 feet by 1148. A wide and lofty vestibule runs across the full extent of each end, and these afford the most imposing interior views of the building. They are known respectively as the Galérie d'Iéna and Galérie de l'École Militaire, from their vicinity to the bridge and school respectively. Being lofty themselves, and having central and flanking domed towers which break the uniformity, their fronts form the principal façades of the building, of which, architecturally speaking, they are the principal entrances; but in fact, as happens with buildings of such acreage, the actual inlets depend upon the predominance in numbers of the people on one or another side of the building, the means of