pleins de peintures vives
et plaisantes, de la plupart des etats de la vie. On remarques dans
touts ses productions une imagination enjouee et singuliere;"
Pontchasteau, who wrote on the cultivation of fruit trees, whose
penitence and devotion were so severely austere, and whose very singular
history is given us in the interesting "Lettres de Madame la Comtesse de
la Riviere;" Linant, to whom Voltaire was a warm protector and friend,
and who, in 1745, wrote his poem Sur la Perfection des Jardins, sous la
regne de Louis XIV.; and of whom it was said that "les qualites du
coeur ne le caracterisoient pas moins que celles de l'esprit;" Le Pere
Rapin;[4] D'Argenville; Le Maistre, curate of Joinville, who in 1719
added to his "Fruitier de la France," "Une Dissertation historique sur
l'origine et les progres des Jardins; Vaniere, who wrote the Praedium
Rusticum;[5] Arnauld d'Andilli, in so many respects rendered
illustrious, who retired to the convent of Port Royal, (that divine
solitude, where the whole country for a league round breathed the air of
virtue and holiness, to quote Mad. de Sevigne's words), and who sent
each year to the queen some of that choice fruit which he there with
such zeal cultivated, and which Mazarin "appelloit en riant des fruits
benis." This good man died at the age of eighty-six, and the letter of
Mad. de Sevigne, of the date of Sept. 23, 1671, will alone consign him
to the respect of future ages;[6] Jean Paul de Ardenne, superior of the
congregation of the oratory of Marseilles, one of the most famous
florists of the period in which he lived, and who devoted great part of
his time in deeds of charity; Francis Bertrand, who, in 1757, published
Ruris delicae, being poems from Tibullus, Claudian, Horace, and from many
French writers, on the pleasures of the country; Mons. de Chabanon;
Morel, who assisted in laying out Ermenonville, and who wrote, among
other works, Theorie des Jardins, ou l'art des Jardins de la Nature; the
animated Prevost; Gouges de Cessieres, who wrote Les Jardins d'Ornament,
ou les Georgiques Francoises; he, too, whom the Prince de Ligne calls

----_enchanteur_ De Lille!
_O_ Virgile _moderne_!

and whose generous invocation to the memory of Captain Cook must endear
his name to every Englishman;[7] the Viscount Girardin, who wrote De la
Composition des Paysages, who buried Rousseau in his garden at
Ermenonville, and who kept a band of musicians to perambulate t