lister's travels in prance.

6 5

compared. They are veined like wood, and of an amber colour: thefeare the admi-rable effeft of petrifaffion. Of this very {lone I have feen great blocks in the banks of thedropping well at Knarefborough in Yorkfhire. I forgot to af.c here whence they hadthem.

In one of the ground rooms was a femicircular gilt bar or rail, which took off andinclofed the upper end of the room : within the bar was difpofed feveral rows of por-Cellain or fine china on gilt flielves. Here at the corners, within the bar, opened twofmall doors, whence the ambafiador and his retinue were plentifully ferved with cho-colate, tea, and coffee, in a molt obliging manner. Many ot the nobility and gentle-men of France were ordered to attend him there.

The two fide fronts of the houfe have in profpeft great alleys cut through the woods,and paved for the more commodious coming down to the houfe; which is defendingall the way.

On each fide the valley, clofe under the woods, run along in a line, fix fquarepavillions or fmaller palaces of the very fame figure and beauty with the Mother Houfe;at equal, but large diftances, as five hundred paces. The fix on the right hand thegarden are for the men; the other fix on the left are for the women of quality whomthe king weekly appoints, upon a lift given, to attend him, and enjoy the pleafure ofthis retirement, as 1 may fay, from court. Before thafe pavillions, and betwixt them, arethe fineft alleys and walks imaginable, with fountains, and all the decorations of treillageand flowers. Such a fhew of not ordinary tulips in broad beds, of one thoufand paceslong, every where, all this vaft garden over, in their full beauty, was a moft furprifingfight. I could not forbear to fay to the Duke de Villeroy, who was pleafed much to ac-company me in this walk, that fure all the gardens in France had contributed to thisprofufion of flowers; which he took fo well, that the Marifhal his father, afterwardsdetached himfelf to Angle me out, and very obligingly embraced me, and faluted mewith a kifs, and followed it with very kind and familiar difeourfe.

The cafcade coming down from the brow of the hill, on that front of the houfe whichrefpe&s and ftands near it, was new and Angular, and of the king’s own invention, as in-deed, all the garden befides. From the houfe it appeared a broad river, quietly glidingdown the hill; but when I went near it, I found it compofed of fifty-two large fquareand fliallow bafins of water, difpofed at right angles, and not declining, but falling overone into another.

In the garden were many fountains, nobly adorned, and had variety of water pipesplaying up into the air in them. Here are fome gerbes of a fingular fafhion, with a cir-cle of a great number of large pipes, within at leaf! two feet diameter; which madethe appearance of a vaft pillar of water. There was one jet d’eau in the bottom of thegarden, which we were told threw up water 120 feet high; for cf 50 and morefountains, we faw but thofe on the fide alleys to play; moft of the great bafins in themiddle were mending and dry. To furnifh all this water, there is a moft ftupendous.machine, which was invented by two Liegois This machine forces the water up 560feet, from the river Seine, to the top of the tower or aquedufh It throws up 5700inches of water by almoft continued reflations or quick pulfes. It is wrought by 14wheels of 3 2 feet diameter each, fet in the river, and carried about night and day by itsftream.

This invention is the fame with what is praffifed in the deep coal-pits about Leeds inLower-Germany ; fo that to fee the engines, and a great number of iron cylinders orwater-pipes, lying bare above ground, and running up a vaft mountain, is to imagine adeep coal-mine turned wrongfide outward. J

VOL. IV.

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