grand view of the Tuileries, and terminates so grandly with the high terraces whence we perceive the catastrophe of the Place de la Concorde,[1]—be changed in the least without disturbing their symmetry, and consequently their real beauty. Moreover, this untimely garden-work is for other reasons bad for the King. Firstly, it makes the sovereign an object of constant gossip, which is just at present not peculiarly to his advantage; and secondly, it is a cause that multitudes of street-folk assemble before it, making all kinds of significant comments, who perhaps seek to forget their hunger in gossiping, and who in any case have hands which have long been idle. There may be heard many a bitter sharp remark and red-burning sarcasm which recall 1790. At the entry of the new garden may be seen a copy in bronze of the Knife-grinder, the original of which may be seen in the Tribune of Florence, as to the meaning of which many opinions prevail.[2]
- ↑ So in both German and French versions, the words "scene of the" being inadvertently omitted. If Louis Philippe had the catastrophe itself always before his eyes, it is no wonder that he had a flower fence erected to shut out the ghostly vision.—Translator.
- ↑ In all of which it is probable that the learned make as great mistakes as did the revolutionary philanthropist of the Anti-Jacobin when he believed his living knife-grinder to be a victim of social abuses. I conjecture that this statue represents a tinker grinding a knife, "only this and nothing more," for he
