has already, but for something different, that may be new and singular. Therefore, delve and devastate, and cut and carve, in this glorious field, according to your pleasure; and depend upon it, everything you do or purpose will be right in his eyes." This speech was as the murmur of a running brook in the ears of a tired wanderer in the desert. The Count drew balsam to his soul from it, and courage to commence with boldness the ungainly undertaking. He set his men to work at random, without plan; and proceeded with the well-ordered shady park, as one of your "bold geniuses" proceeds with an antiquated author, who falls into his creative hands, and, nill he will he, must submit to let himself be modernised, that is to say, again made readable and likeable; or as a new pedagogue with the ancient forms of the Schools. He jumbled in variegated confusion what he found before him, making all things different, nothing better. The profitable fruit-trees he rooted out, and planted rosemary and valerian, and exotic shrubs, or scentless amaranths, in their stead. The rich soil he dug away, and coated the naked bottom with many-coloured gravel, which he carefully stamped hard, and smoothed like a threshing-floor, that no blade of grass might spring in it. The whole space he divided into various terraces, which he begirt with a hem of green; and through these a strangely-twisted flower-bed serpentised along, and ended in a knot of villanously-smelling boxwood. And as from his ignorance of botany, he paid no heed to the proper seasons for sowing and planting, his garden project hovered for a long time between life and death, and had the aspect of a suit of clothes _a feuille mourante_.