artificial tumulus-shaped mound, the eye wanders down the sweet scenery of the valley until in the extreme distance it rests on the palace and park of St Germain-en-Laye. Masses of roses, carnations, lavender, geraniums, and a multitude of other flowers, planted in beds along the upper side of the terrace, contribute their fragrance to enhance the delight of this lovely walk. Immediately beneath the terrace, enclosed by a wall covered with vines, and roofed or coved with large picturesque tiles, is a spacious kitchen and fruit garden, covered just now by its luxuriant crop of all kinds. The more distant part of the grounds is laid out in lawns of smooth turf, interspersed with a variety of shrubs and forest-trees, scattered about singly, in clumps, or sometimes in close thickets or open groves. A lofty stone wall encloses three sides of this domain, the terrace forming a fourth, and a gateway in the further part permits access to my park without trespassing on my _homestead_. The house is elegantly furnished with articles of the most costly and luxurious description, and exquisite statues of white marble decorate the corridors, staircases, and the large saloon before mentioned. The apartment I have chosen for myself is immediately over and corresponding to this, and is a perfect _bijou_; it is fitted up with a taste and splendour that bespeak the inhabitant at once voluptuous and refined. Separated from the other apartments by a small antechamber, it occupies the whole extremity of the house, overlooking the Seine, &c. In this end, like the saloon below, one large window opening to the floor, but into an iron balcony, commands a most delicious view. Immediately below is my well-stocked rich-looking garden; beyond that, yet still, as it were, under me, the finely-rounded luxuriant masses of foliage of the stately elms in the park; then stretch out, like a verdant carpet, the spacious meadows, the sameness of their level expanse diversified and rendered interesting by thickets of underwood, bushes, and occasional clumps of trees. These are bounded by the silvery waters of the Seine, above which rises rather abruptly a curious chain of hills, round-topped, and broken in places by gypsum cliffs, their slopes clothed with vineyards, and separated from a similar isolated hill,[11] evidently a continuation, by a singular gap, through which is seen a rich country extending far back, and in the extreme distance the chateau and park of the Montmorenci. The contrast between the purply haze enveloping this country, and the more vivid colouring of the nearer landscape, gives it a dreamy and indescribably mysterious appearance. At the foot of the hills on the river-bank, and immediately opposite my window, the white buildings of Argenteuil, mingled with foliage, form a pleasing object, its church-tower decorated by the sacred _pavillon blanc_, which waves continually from its upper window. To the left the picturesque little