in bronze. Connected with this is the Parterre of Water, with two splendid fountains, ever replenishing two large oblong basins filled with golden fishes. Groups of statuary enrich the landscape. From the centre of each of the basins rise jets of water. These grounds lie spread out before the magnificent banqueting hall of the palace. It is difficult to imagine a scene more beautiful than is thus presented to the eye. Let the reader recur to the plan of Versailles, and contemplate the vast expanse of lawn, forest, garden, grove, fountain, lake, walks, and avenues which are spread before him over a space of thirty-two thousand acres. From the Parterre of Water a flight of massive white steps conducts to the Fountain of Latona.
At the extremity of the park is a beautiful palace called the Grand Trianon. It was built by Louis XIV. for Madame Maintenon. This edifice, spacious and aristocratic as it is in all its appliances, possesses the charm of beauty rather than that of grandeur. It seems constructed for an attractive home of opulence and taste. It was a favorite retreat of the Bourbons, from the pomp and ceremony of Versailles. This was also one of the favorite resorts of Napoleon when he sought a few hours of repose from the cares of empire. That he might reach it without loss of time, he constructed a direct road from thence to St. Cloud.
The Little Trianon, however, with its surroundings, constitutes to many minds the most attractive spot in this region of attractions. It is a beautiful house, about eighty feet square, erected by Louis XV. for the hapless Madame du Barri. It is constructed in the style of a Roman pavilion, and surrounded with gardens ornamented in the highest attainments of French and English art. Temples, cottages, groves, lawns, crags, fountains, lakes, cascades, embellish the grounds and present a scene of peaceful beauty which the garden of Eden could hardly have surpassed. This was the favorite abode of Maria Antoinette. She called it her home. In the quietude of this miniature palace, she loved to disembarrass herself of the restraints of regal life; and in the society of congenial friends, and in the privacy of her own rural walks to forget that she was an envied, hated queen. But even here the monotony of life wearied her, and deeply regretting that she had not formed in early youth intellectual tastes, she once sadly exclaimed to her companions, "What a resource, amidst the casualties of life, is to be found in a well cultivated mind. One can then be one's own companion, and find society in one's own thoughts." There is a beautiful sheet of water in the centre of the romantic, deeply wooded grounds of the Little Trianon, upon the green shores of which Maria, for pastime, erected a beautiful Swiss village, with its picturesque inn, its farm house and cow sheds, and its mill.
Here the regal votaries of pleasure, satiated with the gayeties of Paris, weary of the splendors and the etiquette of the Tuileries and Versailles, endeavored to step from the palace to the cottage, and in the humble employments of the humblest life, to alleviate the monotony of an existence devoted only to pleasure. They played that they were peasants, put on the garb of peasants, and engaged heartily in the employments of peasants. King Louis was the inn-keeper, and Maria Antoinette, with her sleeves tucked up and her apron bound around her, the inn-keeper's pretty and energetic wife. She courtesied humbly to the guests, whom her husband received at the door, spread the table, for them, and placed before them the fresh butter which, in the dairy, she had churned with her own hands. A noble duke kept the shop and sold the groceries. A graceful, high-born duchess was Betty, the maid of the inn. A marquis, who proudly traced his lineage through many centuries, was the miller, grinding the wheat for the evening meal.
The sun was just sinking beneath the horizon, on a calm, warm, beautiful afternoon, when we sauntered through this picturesque, lovely, silent, deserted village. It was all in perfect repair! The green lawn was of velvet softness. The trees and shrubbery were in full leaf. Innumerable birds filled the air with their warblings, and the chirp of the insect, the rustling of the leaves, the sighing of the wind, the ripple of the streamlet, and the silence of all human voices, so deep, so solemn, left an impress upon the mind never to be forgotten. How terrible the fate of those who once made these scenes resound with the voice of gayety. Some were burned in their chateaux, or massacred in the streets. Some died miserably on pallets of straw in dungeons dark, and wet, and cold. Some were dragged by a deriding mob to the guillotine to bleed beneath its keen knife. And some, in beggary and wretchedness, wandered through weary years, in foreign lands, envying the fate of those who had found a more speedy death. The palace of Versailles! It is a monument of oppression and pride. It will be well for the rulers of Europe to heed its monitory voice. The thoughtful American will return from the inspection of its grandeur, admiring, more profoundly than ever before, the beautiful simplicity of his own land. He will more highly prize those noble institutions of freedom and of popular rights which open before every citizen an unobstructed avenue to wealth and power, encouraging every man to industry, and securing to every man the possession of what he earns. The glory of America consists not in the pride of palaces and the pomp of armies, but in the tasteful homes of a virtuous, intelligent, and happy people.
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE
Impartial History, without a dissenting voice, must award the responsibility of the rupture of the peace of Amiens to the government of Great Britain. Napoleon had nothing to hope for from war, and every thing to fear. The only way in which he could even approach his formidable enemy, was by crossing the sea, and invading England. He acknowledged, and the world knew, that such an enterprise was an act of perfect desperation, for England was the undisputed mistress of the seas, and no naval power could stand before her ships. The voice of poetry was the voice of truth —
"Britannia needs no bulwarks, to frown along the steep,
Her march is on the mountain-wave; her home is on the deep."
England, with her invincible navy, could assail France in every quarter. She could sweep the merchant ships of the infant Republic from the ocean, and appropriate to herself the commerce of all climes. Thus war proffered to England security and wealth. It promised the commercial ruin of a dreaded rival, whose rapid strides toward opulence and power had excited the most intense alarm. The temptation thus presented to the British cabinet to renew the war was powerful in the extreme. It required more virtue than ordinarily falls to the lot of cabinets, to resist. Unhappily for suffering humanity, England yielded to the temptation. She refused to fulfil the stipulations of a treaty solemnly ratified, retained possession of Malta, in violation of her plighted faith, and renewed the assault upon France.
In a communication which Napoleon made to the legislative bodies just before the rupture, he said: "Two parties contend in England for the possession of power. One has concluded a peace. The other cherishes implacable hatred against France. Hence arises this fluctuation in councils and in measures, and this attitude, at one time pacific and again menacing. While this strife continues, there are measures which prudence demands of the government of the Republic. Five hundred thousand men ought to be, and will be, ready to defend our country, and to avenge insult. Strange necessity, which wicked passions impose upon two nations, who should be, by the same interests and the same desires, devoted to peace. But let us hope for the best; and believe that we shall yet hear from the cabinet of England the councils of wisdom and the voice of humanity." Says Alison, the most eloquent, able, and impartial of those English historians who, with patriotic zeal, have advocated the cause of their own country, "Upon coolly reviewing the circumstances under which the conflict was renewed, it is impossible to deny that the British government manifested a feverish anxiety to come to a rupture, and that, so far as the transactions between the two countries are concerned, they were the aggressors."
When Mr. Fox was in Paris, he was one day, with Napoleon and several other gentlemen, in the gallery of the Louvre, looking at a magnificent globe, of unusual magnitude, which had been deposited in the museum. Some one remarked upon the very small space which the island of Great Britain seemed to occupy. "Yes," said Mr. Fox, as he approached the globe, and attempted to encircle it in his extended arms, "England is a small island, but with her power she girdles the world." This was not an empty boast. Her possessions were every where. In Spain, in the Mediterranean, in the East Indies and West Indies, in Asia, Africa, and America, and over innumerable islands of the ocean, she extended her sceptre. Rome,
