W.]

[Illustration: VERSAILLES--COURT-YARD.]

This gorgeous mansion of the monarchs of France presents a front eight
hundred feet in length, and has connected with it fifteen projecting
buildings of spacious dimensions, decorated with Ionic columns and
pilasters, constituting almost a city in itself. One great gallery,
adorned with statuary, paintings, and architectural embellishments, is
two hundred and thirty-two feet long, thirty broad, and thirty-seven
high, and lighted by seventeen large windows. Many gorgeous saloons,
furnished with the most costly splendor, a banqueting-room of the
most spacious dimensions, where luxurious kings have long rioted in
midnight revels, an opera house and a chapel, whose beautifully fluted
pillars support a dome which is the admiration of all who look up
upon its graceful beauty, combine to lend attractions to these royal
abodes such as few other earthly mansions can rival, and none,
perhaps, eclipse. The gardens, in the midst of which this voluptuous
residence reposes, are equal in splendor to the palace they are
intended to adorn. Here the kings of France had rioted in boundless
profusion, and every conceivable appliance of pleasure was collected
in these abodes, from which all thoughts of retribution were
studiously excluded. The expense incurred in rearing and embellishing
this princely structure has amounted to uncounted millions. But we
must not forget that these millions were wrested from the toiling
multitude, who dwelt in mud hovels, and ate the coarsest food, that
their proud and licentious rulers might be "clothed in purple and fine
linen, and fare sumptuously every day." Such was the home to which the
beautiful Maria Antoinette, the bride of fifteen, was introduced; and
in the midst of temptations to which such voluptuousness exposed her,
she entered upon her dark and gloomy career. This, however, was but
one of her abodes. It was but one even of her country seats. At
Versailles there were other palaces, in the construction and the
embellishment of which the revenues of the kingdom had been lavished
and in whose luxurious chambers all the laws of God had been openly
set at defiance by those earthly kings who ever forgot that there was
one enthroned above them as the King of kings.

[Illustration: FOUNTAINS AT VERSAILLES.]

[Illustration: FOUNTAIN OF THE STAR.]

Within the circuit of the park are two smaller palaces, called the
Great and the Little Trianon. These may