[GIRARDIN, Louis Stanislas Cecile Xavier, Comte de]. ~ Promenade ou Itineraire des Jardins d’Ermenonville. Paris: Mérigot père, Gattey, Guyot and Murray at Ermenonville, 1788.
8vo (218 × 130 mm), pp. 68, plus 25 aquatint plates (each with original tissue guards) and two leaves of engraved music (’Chanson de Berger de la Grotte verte’). Contemporary marbled sheep, spine ruled in compartments, green morocco label, yellow edges. Rubbed, spine slightly faded. Later bookplate of Jean Furstenberg. An excellent copy.
First edition of this superbly illustrated account of Girardin’s garden at Ermenonville, which was inspired both by the philosophy of Rousseau and the English landscape gardens of the eighteenth century. It was to become Rousseau’s resting place, within an elaborate tomb on an island in the Lac de peupliers. The delightful aquatint plates here depict the philosophical temple, picturesque grottoes and torrents. It as reprinted in 1811. Much of what Girardin created was destroyed in the Revolutionary era Cohen-De Ricci 439; Hunt 695.