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 VERSAILLES. 289

monuments are exceedingly costly, and some of their recumbent statues, by a strange perversion of taste, depict the distortions and agonies of death with fearful accuracy.

At the Porte St. Denis, is the celebrated triumphal arch, erected to commemorate the victories of Louis the Fourteenth. Its proportions and sculpture are much admired, and surmounting the arch in bas relief, is the king on horseback, represented as cross ing the Rhine, with only the inscription, &quot; Ludovico May no&quot; But in no spot are his ambition and lavish expenditure so conspicuous as in the palace of Ver sailles, which cannot be explored without remember ing its mournful influence on the fates of France, at the birth of the Revolution. A double line of colossal statues of the great of other days, receive the visitant at the gates. The paintings, the tapestry, the statues, the fountains, it would require volumes to describe. Gallery after gallery astonishes the sight. Here Ludo vico Magno, as he was fond of being styled, is multi plied by the pencil in the most imposing forms of martial and regal state. The departments allotted to Napoleon are still blazing with the portraiture of his battles, and the trophies of his renown. Yet in such a place, even more, it would seem, than amid the tombs, the mind is led to reflect on the vanity of mortal glory. Descending a hundred marble steps, we visited the immense orangery, where, amid throngs of fine orange trees, we were shown one said to be three hundred and another four hundred years old, still vigorous and in 19

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