The cascade of the Trocadéro has nothing meretricious about it. It is, like the building of which it is the finest ornament, of Jura marble, while much of the adjacent work is of artificial stone so admirably made that one cannot tell the difference, and is disposed to give the preference to the latter as evincing greater ingenuity than the mere patient chiselling of the quarry-stone. The pools are symmetrical, in conformity to the style of their surroundings, their overflows curved, the successive falls being about two feet after the first dash nine hundred and twenty feet from the balcony level. Each side of the cascade is flanked by six small pools in which are spouting and spray jets. The course ends in a pool which may be described as square, with circular bays on three of its sides. In this are one large jet and two smaller ones, which are themselves beautiful and keep the surface in a pleasant ripple. The corner pillars are crowned by colossal gilt figures of animals, supposed to represent what we were used to call the "four quarters of the earth"—Europe, Asia, Africa and America, as the books had it before America had attained any prominence in public estimation. These are typified by a horse, an elephant, a rhinoceros and a bull, the latter probably a tribute to our bison, but not much like him. These face the four winds, so to speak, and do indeed more nearly, as they are set obliquely, than do the grounds and buildings, the length of which runs north-west and south-east. Each animal has his back to the pool, and with one exception is in a rampant attitude.

Many thousands of cubic mètres of stone were quarried away to afford a site for the cascade, for the system of water-pipes which supply the various pools and jets and conduct off the surplus. The size of the site occupied by these hydraulic works is 360 by 75 feet.

The balcony of the Trocadéro facing toward the river and the Champ de Mars affords the most extensive view obtainable in the grounds. Beneath is the cascade with its basins and fountains, and spreading away on each side is the garden with its various national buildings, neat, gaudy or grotesque. Spanning the invisible roads and river is the broad Pont d'Iéna, and then comes a repetition of the garden, the sward dotted with parterres and buildings. A broad terrace, crowned with the splendid façade of the main building, does not quite terminate the view, for from the height of the lower corridor of the rotunda the buildings of Paris are seen to stretch away in the distance. The hill of Montmartre on the north and the heights of Chatillon and Clamart on the south terminate the view in those directions.

The cascade immediately beneath us has been already described, but how shall we give an impression of the appearance of the buildings collected in groups on each side of the main avenue? So great is the variety of objects to be presented that any very large unbroken surface of sward is impossible. The general plan is geometrical, and the absence of large trees on the newly-made ground has prevented any attempt at woodland scenery.

The French make great use of common flowers in obtaining effects of color. Some square beds of large size have centres of purple and white stocks, giving a mottled appearance, with a border of the tender blue forget-me-nots and a fringe of double daisies. Other beds are full of purple, red and white anemones, multicolored poppies or yellow marigolds. The sober mignonette is too great a favorite to be excluded, though it lends little to the effect. The gorgeous rhododendron is here massed in large beds, and there forms a standard tree with a formal clump of foliage and gay flowers, contrasting with the bright green of the succulent grass. The roses are by thousands in beds and lining the walks, and here are especially to be seen the standard roses for which Europe is so famous, but which do not seem to prosper with us.

Besides the flowers and flowering shrubs, a most profuse use is made of evergreens, which are removed of surprising size and forwardness of spring growth. We can form little conception from our gardens at home of the wealth, variety and exuberance of the evergreen foliage in Southern England and Northern France—the Spanish and Portuguese laurel, laurustinus, arbutus, occuba, bay, hollies in variety, tree-box, with scores of species of pines, firs, arborvitæ and yews, relieved by the contorted foliage of the auraucarias, the sombre cedar of Lebanon and the graceful deodar cedar of the Himalayas. As already remarked, the tree-growth is small, as the ground was a blank and rocky hillside two years ago, and was quarried to make a site for the garden. The tree which seems best to bear moving, and is consequently used in the emergency, is the horse-chestnut, the red and white flowering varieties being intermingled. This is perhaps the most common tree in the streets of Paris, though the plane and maple are also favorites.

BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF THE MAIN BUILDING AND ITS SURROUNDINGS.

Against the rocky scarp on the south of the garden a plantation of aloes, yuccas and cactus has been made. These are in great variety, and some of them in flower. It was especially pleasant to see the independence which the gardener has shown in placing a fine clump of rhubarb in one place where he wanted a green bunch. Some persons would have been afraid of injurious criticism in the use of so common a plant, but we all know what a vigorous, healthy green it is, and as such not to be despised by the artist in color. There are a few specialties in the way of gardening which are worth notice: one is the array of tulips planted by the city of Haarlem, and representing the municipal coat-of-arms in tulips of every imaginable color of which the plant is capable, and around the figures the words "Haarlem, Holland," in scarlet tulips on a ground of white ones.

Another novelty is the Japanese garden with its bamboo fence, the posts and door of entrance being carved with remarkable taste and boldness. The double gates are surmounted by a cock and hen in natural attitudes, which is a relief from the absurdities of their impossible storks and hideous griffins. Perhaps it shows that modern and European ideas are at work there. The flag of Japan, by the way—a red circle on a white ground—is a sensible design, and can be seen at a distance: it contrasts favorably with the dragon on a yellow ground of the Chinese pavilion. The Japanese garden has several large standard umbrellas for permanent shade, and little bamboo-fenced yards for the game chickens and the ducks. Two shrines are in the garden, and a fountain with a feeble jet issuing from a stump and falling into a little fanciful pond with small bays and promontories. On the miniature deep a walnut-shell ship might ride, and on the shoals near the bank aquatic plants are beginning to sprout, and their leaves will soon touch the opposite shore if they are not attended to.

Rather a disparagement, as a matter of taste, to the somewhat formal grace but undoubted beauty of this floral scene are the buildings which are placed here and there over the surface. However, it is these that we have come to see, for if we were in search of landscape or Dutch gardening we should find it better elsewhere. This gardening is only a setting, a frame, in which the various nations have set up their cottages and villas. The ground surface between the houses has been laid off ornamentally to please the eye and satisfy the sense of order and beauty, but is not itself the object of which we are in search. It is impossible perhaps to harmonize such an incongruous set of buildings, adapted for different climates, habits, tastes and needs. Here on the left is a large white castellated house of Algiers. It has blank walls and loopholed towers, and no suggestion of a tree or flower, but gives an idea of the land where the sand of the desert comes up to the doorstep and beggars and thieves go on horseback. On the opposite extremity, at the right, is a Chinese house with its peculiar curved roof, suggested originally, doubtless, by the Tartar tent, but having more curves and points than were ever shown by canvas or felt. In a district by themselves the readers of the Koran—or a set of people passing for such—have their Persian, Tunisian, Morocco and Turkish kiosques, and the inhabitants seem perhaps one shade cleaner than they did in Philadelphia. They are supposed, at least, to be the same, and have an exactly similar lot of rubbish and brass jewelry for sale, and oil of cassia, which they sell for the attar of the "gardens of Gul in their bloom." Next is a campanile of Sweden, and near it are the Swedish and Norwegian houses, armed against winter. Then the Japanese cottage with sides all open, mats on the floors and no furniture to speak of. Then comes a Moorish pavilion of Spain with nondescript ornaments, the bulbous domes and pinnacles supporting the flags of yellow and red—of barbaric taste, color and significance.

We have yet to notice the Italian villa, the Oriental mosque, the Swiss chalet and the log hut; also the modern pavilion with zinc roof, the thatched houses of Britain and of Normandy, the Elizabethan cottage and the English farm-house. What they lack in size they make up in variety, may be said of the greenhouses and conservatories dotted about the place. In and outside of them the marvellous skill and patience of the gardener is seen in the rigidly-formal or abnormally-directed limbs of the fruit trees. The fish-ponds and fountains are neither numerous nor large, but the aquarium may merit more extended description when completed.

Standing, sensible-looking and tasteful, in the midst of much that is trumpery, but good enough for a summer fête, and placed here not as exhibits of good taste, but of what their owners think good, rises the wooden building with skylight roof of "The Administration of Forests and Waters." It is on a beautiful knoll, and has a wooden frame with tongued and grooved panels, the whole varnished to show the natural grain of the timber. On the panels outside are arranged the tools and implements of arboriculture and forestry.

The flags of the different nations displayed upon these buildings give animation to the scene, and the glance might pass at once from this panorama to the other side of the Seine, where the scene is repeated, but for the intervention of long barnlike sheds with tile roofs which intrude themselves along the banks of the river, and quench the poetry of the fanciful and picturesque as the eye passes from the immediate foreground and seeks the magnificent façade of the Salle d'Iéna, the river front of the main building occupying the Champ de Mars. The flags of all nations are flying from the numerous minor pinnacles, while the six domes on the ends and centres of the east and west façades display the tricolor of France.

The best view of the exterior is obtained from the Trocadéro. The building itself is so large that some distance is necessary to take in the whole at a glance. The approach to it by way of the Pont d'Iéna has been marred by raising the bridge to too great a height, so that the impression in crossing the Seine is that the building stands upon low ground. Standing upon the east end of the bridge, one cannot see the base on the other side of the river, which suggests descent and dwarfs the building. The bridge retains its colossal statuary, each of the four groups consisting of an unmounted man and a horse. They respectively represent a Greek, Roman, Gaul and Arab. The bridge was erected to commemorate the victory over the Prussians in 1806, and Blücher, who had his head-quarters at St. Cloud in 1815, threatened to blow it up. After crossing the bridge we find ourselves reaching the work-a-day world. On the left are represented the foundries and workshops of Creuzot, Chaumont and Serrenorri. Near by is a model of the observatory of Mount Jouvis and an annex of the state tobacco-factory of France.

The building on the Champ de Mars is 2132 feet by 1148. A wide and lofty vestibule runs across the full extent of each end, and these afford the most imposing interior views of the building. They are known respectively as the Galérie d'Iéna and Galérie de l'École Militaire, from their vicinity to the bridge and school respectively. Being lofty themselves, and having central and flanking domed towers which break the uniformity, their fronts form the principal façades of the building, of which, architecturally speaking, they are the principal entrances; but in fact, as happens with buildings of such acreage, the actual inlets depend upon the predominance in numbers of the people on one or another side of the building, the means of approach by land and water, and the contiguous streets of favorite and convenient travel. In the present case the bulk of the people reach the grounds either by water at the south-east corner or by land at the intersection of Avenue Rapp with the Avenue Bourdonnaye, which latter bounds the Champ de Mars on its southern side.

The end-vestibules are connected by five longitudinal galleries on each side of the open area in the middle of the building. The five galleries on the southern side belong to France, and the five on the northern side are divided by transverse partitions among the foreign nations present, in very greatly differing quantities. England, for instance, occupies nearly two-sevenths of the whole space devoted to foreign exhibitors, being more than the sum of the amounts allotted to Spain, China, Japan, Italy, Sweden, Norway and the United States. The end-vestibules have curved roofs with highly ornamented ceilings of a succession of flat domes along the centres, with three rows of deep soffits on each side, gayly painted. The walls are nearly all glass in iron frames, and the panes of white glass alternate in checkerwork with those having blue tracery upon them. The whole building is principally of iron and glass, the roof of wood, with zinc plates and numerous skylights over the interior galleries. The machinery galleries of each side are much the largest of the longitudinal ones, and have high roofs with side windows above the levels of the roofs on each side of them; but the four other galleries on each side of the building have quite low ceilings, which make one fear for the quality of the ventilation when the heat is at its greatest.

In the interior of the quadrangular building is an open space about two hundred feet broad and nearly two thousand feet long, reaching from one vestibule to the other; and in this space are two rows of fine-art pavilions and a building for the exhibition of the municipal works of the city. This isolated building is in the central portion of the whole structure, the fine-art pavilions being arranged in line with it, four in a group, the salons of a group connected by lobbies and also with the large end-vestibules at the end upon which they abut.