The best example remaining of the Louis XV garden is that which
surrounds the _Pavillon de Musique_ of the Petit Trianon, an addition
to the garden which Louis XIV had given to the Grand Trianon. By
comparison with the big garden of Le Notre this latter conception is as
a boudoir to a reception hall.

The garden of Louis XVI was a composite, with interpolations from across
the Rhine, from Holland and Belgium and from England even; features
which got no great hold, however, but which, for a time, gave it an air
less French than anything which had gone before.

From the beginning of the nineteenth century the formal garden was
practically abandoned in France. It was the period of the real decadence
of the formal garden. This came not from one cause alone but from many.
To the straight lines and gentle curves of former generations upon
generations of French gardens were added sinuosities as varied and
complicated as those of the Vale of Cashmere, and again, with tiny stars
and crescents and what not, the ground resembled an ornamental ceiling
more than it did a garden. The sentimentalism of the epoch did its part,
and accentuated the desire to carry out personal tastes rather than
build on traditionally accepted lines. The taste for the English garden
grew apace in France, and many a noble plantation was remodelled on
these lines, or rooted up altogether. Immediately neighbouring upon the
dwelling the garden still bore some resemblance to its former outlines,
but, as it drew farther away, it became a park, a wildwood or a
preserve.

Isabey Pere, a miniaturist, under Napoleonic stimulus, designed a number
of French gardens in the early years of the nineteenth century,
following more or less the conventional lines of the best work of the
seventeenth century, and succeeded admirably in a small way in
resuscitating the fallen taste. Isabey's gardens may have lacked much
that was remarkable in the best work of Le Notre, but they were
considerably better than anything of a similar nature, so far as
indicating a commendable desire to return to better ideals.

Under the Second Empire a great impulse was given to garden design and
making in Paris itself. It was then that the parks and squares came
really to enter into the artistic conception of what a city beautiful
should be.

Leaving the gardens of the Tuileries and the Luxembourg out of the
question, the Parc Monceau and that of the Buttes Chaumont of to-day,
the descend