ds with which it was
surrounded. Before the time of Le Notre, the finest gardens in the country
had been laid out on what was called the Italian plan. He was too good a
patriot to copy the foreigners: he drove out the Italians, and introduced
a new arrangement, known as the French style, which was, in fact, but an
imitation of the stiff, formal Dutch mode. But of late the English
gardeners had established that supremacy in the art which they have ever
since maintained; and the present aim of every fashionable horticulturist
in France was to copy the effects produced on the banks of the Thames by
Wise and Browne.

Marie Antoinette fell in with the prevailing taste. She imported English
drawings and hired English, gardeners. She visited in person the Count de
Caraman, and one or two other nobles, who had already done something by
their example to inoculate the Parisians with the new fashion. And
presently lawns and shrubberies, widening invariably simple flower-beds,
supplanted the stately uniformity of terraces, alleys converging on
central fountains, or on alcoves as solid and stiff as the palace itself,
and trees cut into all kinds of fantastic shapes, which had previously
been regarded as the masterpieces of the gardeners' invention. Her
happiness was at its height when, at the end of a few months, all was
completed to her liking, and she could invite her husband to an
entertainment in a retreat which was wholly her own, and the chief
beauties of which were her own work.

As yet, therefore, all was happiness, and prospect of happiness. Even
Maria Teresa, whose unceasing anxiety for her daughter often induced her
to see the worst side of things, was rendered for a moment almost playful
by the reports which reached Vienna of the universal popularity of "Louis
XVI. and his little queen!" "She blushed," she said, "to think that in
thirty-three years of her reign she had not done as much as Louis had done
in thirty-three days.[4]" But she still warned her daughter that every
thing depended on keeping up the happy impression already made; that much
still remained to be done. And the queen's answer showed that her new
authority had brought with it some cares. "It is true," she writes, "that
the praises of the king resound everywhere. He deserves it well by the
uprightness of his heart, and the desire which he has to act rightly; but
this French enthusiasm disquiets me for the future. The little that I
understand of business