un devoir de l'accuellier
avec distinction, et furent enchante de la vivacite de son esprit, et de
son intarissable gaiete, qui malgre ses infirmites et son grand age, ne
l'avoit pasencore abandonne. Ses saillies, et ses bon mots etoient comme
autrefois repetes pour tous." His generous heart thus speaks of the
abused and unfortunate Marie Antoinette:--"The breath of calumny has not
even respected the memory of the loveliest and best of women, of whose
spotless heart and irreproachable conduct, no one can bear stronger
evidence than I. Her soul was as pure as her face was fair; yet neither
virtue nor beauty could save the victim of sanguinary liberty." In
relating this (says his biographer), his voice faultered, and his eyes
were suffused with tears. He thus briefly states, with his usual humour
and vivacity, his conversation with Voltaire as to the garden at Ferney:

_P. de L._--Monsieur, Monsieur, cela doit vous coupe beaucoup, quel
charmant jardin!

_Volt._--Oh! mon jardinier est un bete: c'est moi meme qui ait fait
tout.

_P. de L._--Je le croi.

[22] Monsieur Thomas, in his eulogy of Descartes says, it should have
been pronounced at the foot of Newton's statue: or rather, Newton
himself should have been his panegyrist. Of this eulogy, Voltaire, in a
most handsome letter to Mons. Thomas, thus speaks:--"votre ouvrage
m'enchante d'un bout a l'autre, et Je vais le relire des que J'aurai
dicte ma lettre." The sleep and expanding of flowers are most
interestingly reviewed by Mr. Loudon in p. 187 of his Encyclop., and by
M. V. H. de Thury, in the above discourse, a few pages preceding his
seducing description of the magnificent garden of M. de Boursault.

So late ago as the year 1804 it was proposed at Avignon, to erect an
obelisk in memory of Petrarch, at Vaucluse: "il a ete decide, qu'on
l'elevera, vis-avis _l'ancien jardin_ de Petrache, lieu ou le lit de
sorgue forme un angle."

[23] This garden (as Mr. Walpole observes) was planted by the poet,
enriched by him with the fairy gift of eternal summer.

[24] Mr. Pope thus mentions the vines round this cave:--

Depending vines the shelving cavern skreen,
With purple clusters blushing through the green.

[25] Nearly eight pages of Mr. Loudon's Encyclop. are devoted to a very
interesting research on the gardens of the Romans. Sir Joseph Banks has
a paper on the Forcing Houses of the Romans, with a list of Fruits
cultivated by them, now in our gardens, in