sides containing numberless wings and courts, has
vast _casernes_ for the quarters of the household troops, stables for
many hundred horses, and is surrounded by a great many separate hotels,
for the accommodation of the courtiers. It offers a front on the garden,
in a single continuous line, that is broken only by a projection in the
centre of more than a third of a mile in length. This is the only
complete part of the edifice that possesses uniformity; the rest of it
being huge piles grouped around irregular courts, or thrown forward in
wings, that correspond to the huge body like those of the ostrich. There
is on the front next the town, however, some attempt at simplicity and
intelligibility of plan; for there is a vast open court lined by
buildings, which have been commenced in the Grecian style. Napoleon, I
believe, did something here, from which there is reason to suppose that
he sometimes thought of inhabiting the palace. Indeed, so long as France
has a king, it is impossible that such a truly royal abode can ever be
wholly deserted. At present, it is the fashion to grant lodgings in it
to dependants and favourites. Nothing that I have seen gives me so just
and so imposing an idea of the old French monarchy as a visit to
Versailles. Apart from the vastness and splendour of the palace, here is
a town that actually contained, in former times, a hundred thousand
souls, that entirely owed its existence to the presence of the court.
Other monarchs lived in large towns; but here was a monarch whose
presence created one. Figure to yourself the style of the prince, when a
place more populous than Baltimore, and infinitely richer in externals,
existed merely as an appendage to his abode!

The celebrated garden contains two or three hundred acres of land,
besides the ground that is included in the gardens of the two Trianons.
These Trianons are small palaces erected in the gardens, as if the
occupants of the chateau, having reached the acme of magnificence and
splendour in the principal residence, were seeking refuge against the
effect of satiety in these humbler abodes. They appear small and
insignificant after the palace; but the Great Trianon is a considerable
house, and contains a fine suite of apartments, among which are some
very good rooms. There are few English abodes of royalty that equal even
this of Le Grand Trianon. The Petit Trianon was the residence of Madame
de Maintenon; it afterwards was presented to the u