Louis was really famous, now, as a
landscape gardener; the way he laid out Versailles was so much admired
that it was copied all over Europe."
"Do you know anything about Madame Du Barry?" asked Eric; "didn't she
have her head chopped off?"
"She was another great lover of gardening," said Harvey, evasively; "in
fact, I believe the well known rose Du Barry was named after her, and now
I think you had better play for a little and leave your lessons till
later."
Harvey retreated to the library and spent some thirty or forty minutes in
wondering whether it would be possible to compile a history, for use in
elementary schools, in which there should be no prominent mention of
battles, massacres, murderous intrigues, and violent deaths. The York
and Lancaster period and the Napoleonic era would, he admitted to
himself, present considerable difficulties, and the Thirty Years' War
would entail something of a gap if you left it out altogether. Still, it
would be something gained if, at a highly impressionable age, children
could be got to fix their attention on the invention of calico printing
instead of the Spanish Armada or the Battle of Waterloo.
It was time, he thought, to go back to the boys' room, and see how they
were getting on with their peace toys.
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