Adjoining to the Museum, is a garden planted with trees, in which many of the finest monuments are placed; but in which the depravity of the French taste appears in the most striking manner. It is surrounded with houses, and darkened by the shade of lofty buildings; yet, in this gloomy situation, they have placed the tomb of Fenelon, and the united monument of Abelard and Eloise: profaning thus, by the barbarous affectation of artificial taste, and the still more shocking imitation of ancient superstition, the remains of those whose names are enshrined in every heart which can feel the beauty of moral excellence, or share in the sympathy with youthful sorrow.
How different are the feelings with which an Englishman surveys the untouched monuments of English greatness!--and treads the floor of that venerable building which shrouds the remains of all who have dignified their native land--in which her patriots, her poets, and her philosophers, "sleep with her kings, and dignify the scene," which the rage of popular fury has never dared to profane, and the hand of victorious power has never been able to violate; where the ashes of the immortal dead still lie in undisturbed repose, under that splendid roof which covered the tombs of her earliest kings, and witnessed, from its first dawn, the infant glory of the English people.--Nor could the remembrance of the national monuments we have described, ever excite in the mind of a native of France, the same feeling of heroic devotion which inspired the sublime expression of Nelson, as he boarded the Spanish Admiral's ship at St Vincent's--"Westminster Abbey or Victory!"
Though the streets in Paris have an aged and uncomfortable appearance, the form of the houses is such, as, at a distance, to present a picturesque aspect. Their height, their sharp and irregular tops, the vast variety of forms which they assume when seen from different quarters, all combine to render a distant view of them more striking than the long rows of uniform houses of which London is composed. The domes and steeples of Paris, however, are greatly inferior, both in number and magnificence, to those of the English capital.
The gardens of the Thuilleries and the Luxembourg, of which the Parisians think so highly, and which are constantly filled with all ranks of citizens, are laid out with a singularity of taste, of which, in this country, we can scarcely form any conception. The straight walks--the clipt trees--the marble fountains--are fast wearing out in all parts of England; they are to be met with only round the mansions of ancient families, and even there are kept rather from the influence of ancient prejudice, or from the affection to hereditary forms, than from their coincidence with the present taste of the English people. They are seldom, accordingly, disagreeable, with us, to the eye of the most cultivated taste; their singularity forms a pleasing variety to the continued succession of lawns and shrubberies which is every where to be met with; and they are regarded rather as the venerable marks of ancient splendour, than as the barbarous affectation of modern distinction. In France, the native deformity of this taste appears in its real light, without the colouring of any such adventitious circumstances as conceal it in this country. It does not appear there under the softening veil of ancient manners; its avenues do not conduct to the decaying abode of hereditary greatness--its gardens do not mark the scenes of former festivity--its fountains are not covered with the moss which has grown for centuries. It appears as the model of present taste; it is considered as the indication of existing splendour; and sought after, as the form in which the beauty of Nature is now to be admired. All that association accordingly had blended in our minds with the style of ancient gardening in our own country, was instantly divested by its appearance in France; and we felt then the whole importance of that happy change in the national taste, whereby variety has been made to succeed to uniformity, and the imitation of nature to come in the place of the exhibition of art.