215. The park of Chantilly is of great extent, but of little beauty. The surface is nearly flat, the soil light and sandy, and the whole naturally a scattered forest of beech, hornbeam, birch, poplar, and other secondary deciduous trees. The house is a huge pile, which, however, has been diminished in size by the dilapidations of the Revolution. Near it is a large piece of artificial water, and a piece of ground laid out in the English manner. One of the extraordinary things shown to strangers is the stables. These, Duppa observes, �are magnificent, and in the highest degree unfit for their purpose. They are at least forty feet high, and six hundred feet long, without accommodation for a bushel of corn, or a single truss of hay; in the centre is an octagonal room, sixty feet in diameter, and ninety feet in height. Here the prince used to dine once in the course of the hunting season, with a large party of his friends of the chase. The old garden has not been restored, but there is a modern garden, laid out like an English gentleman's pleasure-ground.� (Duppa's Observations, &c., p. 3.)
