the cave of old Mandragora, a place so full of witcheries that surprise followed surprise, and hour by hour, something continually occurred to delight the vision. The vaulting of the entrance was sustained by two sculptured figures very industriously arrayed with minute stones of divers colours; the hair, the eyebrows, and the beards of the statues, and the two sculptured horns of the god Pan were composed of sea shells so neatly and so properly set in that the cement could not be seen. The outer coping of the door was formed like a rustic arch, and garlands of shells, fastened at the four corners, ended close to the heads of the two statues. The inside of the arch tapered to a rocky point, which, in several places, seemed to drip saltpetre. The retaining walls of the arch were set back in niches to form fountains, and all of the fountains depicted some of the various effects of the power of love. In the grotto arose a tomb-like monument ornamented with images representing divers objects, all formed of coloured marble, and trimmed with pictures; wherever such an effect was possible, the trees were pruned to take the appearance of some other object or objects. Thus the laborious and unrestrained intervention of man evoked a factitious type of nature as far from precious as the false _Précieuses_. By the unreserved admiration of its florid descriptions _Astrée_ had consecrated the artificial mode. Nature demanded Lenôtre to strip her gardens of their ridiculous decorations, and to redeem them by simplicity, but when Lenôtre accomplished the work of regeneration the public taste was wounded; the people had become accustomed to the sight of parks decorated like the stage of the theatre, and the simplicity of nature shocked them. La Grande Mademoiselle considered Chenonceaux incomplete; she complained that it "looked unfinished"; her artificially nourished taste missed something, because the owners of Chenonceaux had respected the work of God, and left their park just as they had received it from the hand of its Creator; she wondered why Provence was called beautiful--to her it seemed "ugly enough." She lived at the gate of the Pyrenees thirty days and never entered the country, yet she delighted in the pretentious trinkets with which the landscape-gardeners of the Italian school decorated French woods and gardens. Honoré d'Urfé was responsible for her ignorance. Many of d'Urfé's tastes[39] were noble, and _Astrée_ was a work of excellent purpose--almost a great work; but it lacked the one thing demanded by true art,--love of nature in its simplicity.