titut de France. From a purely sordid point
of view it was a gift valued at something like thirty-five million
francs, not so great as many new-world public legacies of to-day, but in
certain respects of a great deal more artistic worth.

The mass is manifestly imposing, made up as it is, of four distinct
parts, the Eglise, dating from 1692, the Ecuries, the Chatelet--or Petit
Chateau, and the Chateau proper--the modern edifice.

Before the celebrated Ecuries is a green, velvety _pelouse_ which gives
an admirable approach. The architecture of the Ecuries is of a heavy
order and the sculptured decorations actually of little esthetic worth,
representing as they do hunting trophies and the like. Before the great
fountain one deciphers a graven plaque which reads as follows:

Louis Henri de Bourbon
Prince de Conde
Fut Construire Cette Ecurie
1701-1784.

Within the two wings may be stabled nearly two hundred horses. The Grand
Ecuries at Chantilly are assuredly one of the finest examples extant of
that luxuriant art of the eighteenth century French builder. Luxurious,
excessively ornate and overpowering it is, and, for that reason, open to
question. The work of the period knew not the discreet middle road. It
was of Chantilly that it was said that the live stock was better lodged
than its masters. The architect of this portion of the chateau was Jean
Aubert, one of the collaborators of Jules Hardouin Mansart.

The characteristics of Chantilly, take it as a whole, the chateau, the
park and the forest, are chiefly theatrical, but with an all-abiding
regard for the proprieties, for beyond a certain heaviness of
architectural style in parts of the chateau everything is of the finely
focussed relative order of which the French architect and landscape
gardener have for ages been past masters.

The real French garden is here to be seen almost at its best, its
squares and ovals of grassy green apportioned off from the mass by
gravelled walks and ornamented waters. The "_tapis d'orient_" effect, so
frequently quoted by the French in writing of such works, is hardly
excelled elsewhere.

All this shocked the mid-eighteenth century English traveller, but it
was because he did not, perhaps could not, understand. Rigby, "the
Norwich alderman" as the French rather contemptuously referred to this
fine old English gentleman, said frankly of Chantilly: "All this has
cost dear and produced a result far from pleasing." He wo