Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 13.djvu/243

Rh face of the country in general is very wretched; of which I cannot mention a more lively instance than that you meet with wooden shoes and cottages like those in Ireland, before you lose sight of Versailles. I am persuaded, sir, you will find a particular pleasure in taking a view of the French noblemen's houses, arising from the similitude between the good treatment the Houhynhnms meet with here, and that which you have observed in your former travels. The stables that Lewis the Fourteenth has built, are very magnificent; I should do them an injury in comparing them to the palace of St. James's: yet these seem but mean to any one who has seen that of the duke of Bourbon at Chantilli, which lies in a straight line, and contains stalls for near a thousand horses, with large intervals between each; and might very well, at first view, be mistaken for a noble palace: some hundreds of Yahoos are constantly employed in keeping it clean. But if any one would be astonished, he must pay a visit to the machine of Marly, by means of which water is raised half a mile up a hill, and from thence conveyed a league further to Versailles, to supply the water works. Lewis might have saved this vast expense, and have had a more agreeable situation, finer prospects, and water enough, by building his palace near the river; but then he would not have conquered nature.

Upon reading Boileau's account of the Petit Maison, or Bedlam of Paris, I was tempted to go see it: it is a low flat building, without any upper rooms, and might be a good plan for that you intend to found, but that it takes up a greater space than the city perhaps would give; this is common to men and women: there is another vastly more capacious, and Rh