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Updated: May 23, 2025
He has filled the gardens with parterres of glass and flowers, intermixed with all manner of water-works, such as jets-d'eau, canals, cascades, and the like; the eye is lost in prospect of large groves and trees where the sun never enters. King Gaiour, in short, has made it appear that his paternal love exceeds that of any other kind whatever.
It was, perhaps, a better play-place than an English garden would have been, for there were but few flower-beds, and no lawn at all to speak about; but, instead, terraces and balustrades and vases and flights of stone steps more in the Italian style; and there were jets-d'eau, and little fountains that could be set playing by turning water-cocks that were hidden here and there.
Some canoes were here waiting for us, formed of hollowed trunks of trees, thirty feet long: two were lashed together with bamboos, and the boatmen sat one at the head and one at the stern of each: we lay along the bottom of the vessels, and in a second we were darting down the river, at the rate of at least ten or fifteen miles an hour, the bright waters leaping up on all sides, and bounding in jets-d'eau between prows and sterns of the coupled vessels.
The war was not, however, carried on in a very royal sort; for, as the travelling mountebank drives six-in-hand through a country town to entice the gaping provincials to his booth, so these water-jugglers went round the streets of London, throwing up rival jets-d'eau from their mains, to prove the alleged superiority of their engines, and to captivate the fancy of hesitating customers.
Here, in summer, the wide-spreading foliage of the lofty horse-chesnut trees afford a most agreeable shade; the air is cooled by the continual play of the jets-d'eau; while upwards of two hundred orange-trees, which are then set out, impregnate it with a delightful perfume. The garden is now kept in much better order than it was under the monarchy.
From the vestibule of the palace, the perspective produces a most striking effect: the eye first wanders for a moment over the extensive parterre, which is divided into compartments, planted with shrubs and flowers, and decorated with basins, jets-d'eau, vases, and statues in marble and bronze; it then penetrates through a venerable grove which forms a beautiful vista; and, following the same line, it afterwards discovers a fine road, bordered with trees, leading by a gentle ascent to Pont de Neuilly, through the Barriere de Chaillot, where the prospect closes.
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