It is rather a handsome and extensive building, than a monument to the glory of a great king and a great nation. The front toward Paris, composed in part of some corps-de-logis of the ancient hunting-seat of Louis XIII. is irregular, and this grande cour, (and a grand court it certainly is,) does not form a whole. The approach to the garden front is through a passage, and to take a view of this front one must first go away from it. At the edge of the terrace one does not see the wings, which recede, and form a line with the back of this part of the palace: below the steps of the terrace, the lower part of the building is hidden by the intervening ground. This inversion of the wings has not the effect of breaking the too great length of the building: it is said to have been the project of Napoleon to erect a magnificent colonnade or portico in front of that part which stands forward on the terrace; thus the wings, if such they may be called, would be thrown into the back ground: for this they are indeed too handsome; but in the back ground they have been placed by the plan of Louis XIV. One would suppose that they retire to form, on the other side, a part of the eastern front; but they are not even seen from the grand court. The architectural ornaments of the garden façade are not many; slight Corinthian pilasters only; the entrance, even, is what may be called a garden door, hardly distinguishable from the other windows of the ground floor. The staircase is handsome, but not sufficiently so for that to which it leads. I shall not pretend to describe the suite of state apartments. One wonders that men of five feet and some inches high should build, for their own use, rooms so disproportionate to their stature. The chamber in which Louis XIV. died is amongst the largest of these rooms: from its windows are seen the three avenues, called _la patte de corbeau_, or of some other bird: the ends of these avenues are not near enough to the palace; a defect easily to be supplied. This chamber, the central one of the grande cour, remained unoccupied, in token of respect for the memory of that great monarch, who rendered null the efforts of a powerful coalition against him, put his grandson in quiet possession of Spain and the Indies, carried the frontier of France to the Rhine, made all Europe begin to learn French, and exemplified the truth of William of Wykeham's motto,--"manners maketh man." When I saw the palace of Versailles, it was unfurnished; they were renewing the gilding, and repairing the damages of revolution and neglect. The celebrated gallery runs the whole length of the central part of the garden front. The side opposite the windows is panelled with mirrors in a manner exactly resembling the old wainscot which I remember in my youth, and which has now given place to stucco, silk, and paper. What splendid scenes have these mirrors reflected! and all that was then so glorious is now as unsubstantial as the shadowed form.