This Front, Covered With Sculptures,
Is Of The Richest, Stateliest Effect.
The court is ap-
proachcd by a bridge over the pond, and the house
would reflect itself in this wealth of water if the water
were a trifle less opaque.
But there is a certain
stagnation - it affects more senses than one - about
the picturesque pools of Azay. On the hither side of
the bridge is a garden, overshadowed by fine old
sycamores, - a garden shut in by greenhouses and by
a fine last-century gateway, flanked with twin lodges.
Beyond the chateau and the standing waters behind
it is a so-called _parc_, which, however, it must be con-
fessed, has little of park-like beauty. The old houses
(many of them, that is) remain in France; but the old
timber does not remain, and the denuded aspect of
the few acres that surround the chateaux of Touraine
is pitiful to the traveller who has learned to take the
measure of such things from the manors and castles
of England. The domain of the lordly Chaumont is
that of an English suburban villa; and in that and
in other places there is little suggestion, in the
untended aspect of walk and lawns, of the vigilant
British gardener. The manor of Azay, as seen to-day,
dates from the early part of the sixteenth century;
and the industrious Abbe Chevalier, in his very
entertaining though slightly rose-colored book on
Touraine,* (* Promenades pittoresque en Touraine.
Tours: 1869.) speaks of it as, "perhaps the purest expres-
sion of the _belle Renaissance francaise_." "Its height,"
he goes on, "is divided between two stories, terminat-
ing under the roof in a projecting entablature which
imitates a row of machicolations.
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