into the light that the loftiness of them gives the sensation of
vertigo.... Dizzy also the magnificence of the great colonnade
of palmistes and angelins, two hundred feet high, through which:
you pass if you follow the river-path from the cascade--the
famed _Allée des duels_....

The vast height, the pillared solemnity of the ancient trees in
the green dimness, the solitude, the strangeness of shapes but
half seen,--suggesting fancies of silent aspiration, or triumph,
or despair,--all combine to produce a singular impression of
awe.... You are alone; you hear no human voice,--no sounds but
the rushing of the river over its volcanic rocks, and the
creeping of millions of lizards and tree-frogs and little toads.
You see no human face; but you see all around you the labor of
man being gnawed and devoured by nature,--broken bridges, sliding
steps, fallen arches, strangled fountains with empty basins;--
and everywhere arises the pungent odor of decay. This
omnipresent odor affects one unpleasantly;--it never ceases to
remind you that where Nature is most puissant to charm, there
also is she mightiest to destroy.

[Illustration: CASCADE IN THE JARDIN DES PLANTES.]

The beautiful garden is now little more than a wreck of what it
once was; since the fall of the Empire it has been shamefully
abused and neglected. Some _agronome_ sent out to take charge of
it by the Republic, began its destruction by cutting down acres
of enormous and magnificent trees,--including a superb alley of
plants,--for the purpose of experimenting with roses. But the
rose-trees would not be cultivated there; and the serpents