This palace is about four leagues distant from Paris. The approach to it has nothing of that magnificence that I had been led to expect, and the road is in bad repair. On my arrival, I found it was impossible to gain admittance into the palace, which was undergoing a thorough repair, rendered indispensable by neglect during the last twenty years. The number of workmen employed is stated to amount to two thousand. It is a vast pile of building, and certainly one of the most famous royal residences in Europe. A Frenchman tells you with exultation of the vast sums which have been expended in its construction, and thinks that a sufficient proof of its magnificence. An Englishman, however, will very naturally be out of patience at the praises bestowed on gardens laid out in that taste which has been so long exploded in England, and cannot help exclaiming with the poet—
"Lo! what huge heaps of littleness around!"
In front of the palace is a vast terrace which you mount with considerable difficulty by innumerable flights of stairs. To occasion an unexpected treat to the admirers of art, by excluding every thing natural, the whole of this elevation is abundantly supplied with ponds and water-works. The grand vista in front of the palace is formed into a canal, and no description can give a more just idea of these boasted gardens than the following lines of Pope; the only difference being, that the water-works of Versailles are put in motion the first Sunday of every month, and remain stagnant the rest of the year.
"Grove nods at grove, each alley has a brother,
And half the platform just reflects the other.
The suffering eye inverted nature sees,
Trees cut to statues, statues thick as trees;
With here a fountain, never to be play'd,
And there a summer-house that knows no shade;
Here Amphitrite sails thro' myrtle bow'rs,