use to Mr. Aiton in preparing his Hortus Kewensis, by enabling him to ascertain the time when many old plants were first cultivated. Gerarde dated the first edition of his Herbal from Holborn. Wood calls him "the best herbalist of his time." Among the Lansdowne MSS. in the British Museum, is a letter of Gerarde's own drawing-up, for Lord Burghley to recommend to the University of Cambridge the establishment of a physic-garden there, to encourage "the facultie of simpling." Several London localities of Gerarde's simpling may be gathered from his Herbal. Thus, he says: "Of water violets I have not found any such plenty in any one place as in the water ditches adjoining to Saint George his fielde, near London." He describes Mile End, Whitechapel, as the common near London where penny-royal grows in great abundance." The small wild buglosse grows upon the drie ditch bank about Pickadilla ;" and he found "white saxifrage, burr-reedes, &c.," in the ditch, right against the place of execution, St. Thomas-a-Waterings, now the Old Kent-road.

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Aubrey remarks that the pleasure and use of gardens were unknown to our great-grandfathers. "They were contented with pot-herbs, and did mind chiefly their stables. The chronicle tells us that in the reign of King Henry the Eighth pear-mains were so great a rarity that a baskett full of them was a present to the great Cardinall Wolsey." In his (Aubrey's) time, however, gardening was already much improved, and had become common. He adds:-"I doe believe I may modestly affirme that there is now, 1691, ten times as much gardening about London as there was Anno 1660; and wee have been, since that time, much improved in foreign plants, especially since about 1683, there have been exotick plants brought into England no less than seven thousand.” A century and a half ago, almost every garden production was obtained from Holland. The royal fruiterers and greengrocers sent thither for fruits and pot-herbs; and the seedsmen received all their seeds from that quarter. The Brompton-park nurseries procured most of their fruit-trees, and most of the princes in Europe their gardeners, from Holland, whither pupils were sent to study the art. Rose, Cooke, Miller, Hilt, Speechley, &c., spent some time there: its climate is the best in the world for bulbous roots; the country in general is not favourable for the ripening of fruits, yet in the warmer parts the apple and the pear are brought to high perfection.

Rose was head gardener to Lord Essex, at Essex House, in the Strand; he sent him to study the celebrated beauties of Versailles, and on his return, he laid out the gardens as we see them in the bird's-eye views of Essex House, of which, by the way, the water-gate remains at the end of Essex-street. Rose had spent some time in Holland, then the best school of horticulture, and had also studied under Quintiney at Paris. He afterwards became gardener to Charles II., and introduced "such famous dwarf fruit-trees" at Hampton Court and Marlborough Gardens, that London, his apprentice, in the translation of the Retired Gardener, published in 1667, challenges all Europe to exhibit the like;

and it is in allusion to the last two gardens, that Waller describes the Mall of St. James's Park as,

All with a border of rich fruit-trees crown'd.

Rose was the author of The English Vineyard vindicated, and the Way of making Wine in France, first printed with Evelyn's French Gardener. We are familiar with Rose's portrait through a print engraved from the curious and characteristic picture, to which Horace Walpole thus refers, in the following postscript to a letter to the Rev. William Cole, March 6th, 1780:

P.S. Mr. Pennicott has just shown me a most curious and delightful picture. It is Rose, the royal gardener, presenting the first pine-apple raised in England to Charles II. They are in a garden, with a view of a good private house, such as there are several at Sunbury, and about London. It is by far the best likeness of the king I ever saw; the countenance cheerful, good-humoured, and very sensible. He is in brown, lined with orange, and many black ribbons, a large flapped hat, dark wig, not tied up, nor yet busky, a point cravat, no waistcoat, a tasselled handkerchief, hanging from a low pocket. The whole is of the smaller landscape size, and extremely well coloured, with perfect harmony. It was a legacy from London, grandson of him who was partner with Wise. [This picture was presented by Mr. Pennicott to Walpole, and sold at the Strawberry Hill sale for 221. 18. It is now in the possession of Lord Taunton.]

William, Lord Russell, Switzer tells us, "made Stratton, about seven miles from Winchester, his seat, and his gardens there, some of the best that were made in those early days, such, indeed, as have mocked some that have been done since; and the gardens at Southampton House, in Bloomsbury-square, were also of his making.”

Switzer paints his own devotional attachment to gardening in strong colours. He says:- "Next to the more immediate duties of religion, 'tis in the innocency of these employs, thus doing, thus planting, dressing, and busying themselves, that all wise and intelligent persons would be found when Death, the King of Terrors, shall close their eyes, and they themselves be obliged to bid an eternal farewell to these and all other sublunary pleasures:" and he who was thus fond of breathing the sweet and fragrant air of gardens, expresses his own wish in these lines of Cowley :

Sweet shades, adieu! here let my dust remain,
Covered with flowers, and free from noise and pain.

Let evergreens the turfy tomb adorn,

And roseate dews (the glory of the morn)

My carpet deck; then let my soul possess

The happier scenes of an eternal bliss.

Of Thomas Fairchild's garden and vineyard, at Hoxton, and the Botanical Sermon for which he left funds, we have already spoken. (See page 80.) George Ricketts, also of Hoxton, was "the best and most faithful florist" about London, in 1668. Worlidge speaks of his "greatest variety of the choicest apples, pears, cherries, plums, apricots, peaches, malacolones, nectorines, figgs, vines, currans, gooseberries, rasberries, mulberries, medlars, walnuts, nuts, filberts, chesnuts, &c., that

any man hath, and can give the best account of their natures and excellencies." "And hath also the richest and most complete collection of all the great variety of flower-bearing trees and shrubs in this kingdom. That there is not a day in the year but the trees, as well as the most humble plants, do there yield ornaments for Flora; with all sorts of curious and pleasant winter greens, that seemed to perpetuate the spring and summer, from the most humble myrtle, to the very true cedar of Libanus. Not without infinite variety of tulips, auriculaes, anemones, gilly-flowers, and all other sorts of pleasant and delicate flowers, that he may be truly said to be the master-florist of England; and is ready to furnish any ingenious person with any of his choicest plants."

Thomas Whately, whose Observations on Modern Gardening are pronounced by Ensor inimitable, and are praised by Alison, in his work on Taste, was proprietor of Nonesuch Park, in Surrey, whose gardens, already referred to at pp. 236 and 237, were his study.

Gervase Markham was a good soldier, as well as a good scholar; he published many books on husbandry, on fowling, on angling, on agriculture, and gardening. In his English Husbandman, 4to, 1635, he says:— "A garden is so profitable, necessary, and such an ornament and grace to every house and housekeeper, that the dwelling-place is lame and maimed if it want that goodly limbe and beauty."

Philip Miller was emphatically styled, by foreigners, Hortulanorum Princeps. A new era of gardening may be dated from the publication of his Dictionary, and especially from the edition in which the Linnean System was adopted. Miller improved the culture of the vine and the fig; and the Italian brocoli, and the pine-apple, were first made known through his work. He was nearly fifty years gardener to the Apothe caries' Company's garden at Chelsea: he resigned in 1770, at the age of eighty, and dying next year, was buried in St. Luke's old church, Chelsea; in the churchyard is a pyramidal monument to his memory erected by the Linnæan and Horticultural Societies.

The Rev. John Laurence published The Clergyman's Recreation, showing the pleasure and profit of the art of gardening and a poem called Paradise Regained, or the Art of Gardening, in which he paints the extreme beauty of our fruit-trees, when clothed with their differentcoloured blossoms; he took great pleasure in presenting a rich dessert of fruit to his friends, and advocated gardening as a recreation peculiarly suited for clergymen.

Chelsea was formerly a place of courtly resort: many of the nobility as well as scholars, philosophers, and statesmen, resided here; and the mansions had fine old gardens, of which scarcely a trace remains; but we have the Dutch-like river terrace (Cheyne-walk), fronted by lofty trees. One of the earliest celebrities of Chelsea was the mansion of Sir Thomas More, with grounds extending to the Thames. Here More was visited by Henry VIII., who, "after dinner, in a fair garden of his, walked with him by the space of an hour, holding his arm about his neck;" and used to ascend with him to the house-top, to observe

the stars and discourse of astronomy. Here, also, Erasmus visited More; and Holbein worked for three years, painting portraits of the Chancellor and his family. The house subsequently fell into the possession of Digby, Earl of Bristol, and when Evelyn visited here in 1678-9, there was in the garden a rare collection of orange-trees. The clock-house at the north end of Millman-row, long famous for the sale of figs, mulberries, flowers, distilled waters, and gingerbread, was originally the lodge to the gate of the stable-yard of More's house. Nearly a century and a half since Sir Robert Walpole had a house and garden at Chelsea, "next the College:" he considerably enlarged the gardens by a purchase of some adjoining land, and Vanbrugh built an octagon summer-house at the head of the terrace, and a large greenhouse, for a fine collection of exotics.

the

According to Aubrey, Sir John Danvers, of Chelsea, "first taught us way of Italian gardens. He had well travelled France and Italy, and made good observations: he had a very fine fancy, which lay chiefly for gardens and architecture." Sir John lived in a mansion at Chelsea, which was taken down about the year 1696, when Danvers-street was built upon the site: Aubrey has minutely described its gardens.

'

Chelsea Hospital retains its terraces, little canals, and shady lime-walks and gigantic plane-trees, a stately specimen of the Dutch style of William III. The Old Men's Gardens," to the south-east of the College, afforded each pensioner society and employment, and were a portion of the site of Ranelagh Gardens; but they have been swept away.

The Botanic Gardens, or "The Physic Garden" of the Apothecaries' Company, upon the Thames bank, at Chelsea, is maintained for the use of the medical students of London. The ground was first laid out in 1673. Evelyn, in 1685, calls it the "Apothecaries' Garden of Simples," where there is a collection of innumerable rarities of that sort particularly, besides many rare annuals, the tree bearing jesuits' Bark, which had done much wonders in quartan agues. What was very ingenious was the subterranean heate, conveyed by a stove under the conservatory, all vaulted with brick, so as he [the keeper] has the doores and windows open in the hardest frosts, secluding only the snow.

On Sir Hans Sloane purchasing the manor of Chelsea, in 1721, he granted the freehold of the garden to the Apothecaries' Company, on condition that the Professor who gave lectures to the medical students should deliver annually to the Royal Society fifty new plants, well cured and specifically described, and of the growth of the garden, till the number should amount to 2000. This condition was complied with, and a list of the new plants published yearly in the Philosophical Transactions, for about fifty years, when 2500 plants having been presented, the custom was discontinued. The garden is about three acres in extent: it contains a marble statue of Sir Hans Sloane, by Rysbrack, set up in 1733. Two noble cedars were planted in 1683, then about three feet high in 1766, they measured more than twelve feet in circumference at two feet from the ground, and their branches extended forty feet in

diameter. One of these cedars is said to have been brought from Lebanon for Sir Hans Sloane.

On the north side of the garden is a large greenhouse, and over it a library, containing a collection of botanical works, and specimens of seeds and dried plants. The Apothecaries' Company give annually a gold and silver medal to the best informed students in botany who have attended this garden; and they still observe an old custom of summer herbarizing, or simpling excursions to the country, when the members are accompanied by apprentices or pupils.

London and Wise were the great gardeners of this period, and proprietors, in 1694, of the Brompton-park nurseries, which Evelyn describes as a large and noble assembly of trees, evergreens, and shrubs, for planting the boscage, wilderness, or grove, with elms, limes, platanes, Constantinople chestnuts, and black cherry-trees; its " potagere, meloniere, culinierie" garden; seeds, bulbs, roots, and slips, for the flower-garden; occupying about fifty-six acres. In 1705, its plants, at a penny each, were valued at 40,000l.; and it had a wall, half a mile long, covered with vines. Evelyn, in 1694, took "Mr. Waller to see Brompton Park, where he was in admiration at the store of rare plants, and the method he found in that noble nursery, and how well it was cultivated." London and Wise were gardeners to William III.; and they are praised by Addison, in his refined manner, in the Spectator, for their laying out of Kensington Gardens. Wise also superintended the laying out of Hampton Court Gardens. The "Brompton Stock" is now almost the only celebrity of the garden district, which once extended to Chelsea. When the surrounding fields were built on, the smoke injured the plants, and the railways bringing up fruit and vegetables cheaper than they could be grown here, the whole site was cleared in 1855, and has been built upon, and let for the great International Exhibition of 1862; and the new gardens of the Horticultural Society, so that the locality bids fair to regain its gardening celebrity.

One of the most familiar books is John Abercrombie's English Gardener; his biographer relates :

Abercrombie, from a fall down-stairs, in the dark, died at the age of eighty (in 1806), and was buried at St. Pancras. He was present at the famous battle of Prestonpans, which was fought close to his father's garden-walls. For the last twenty years of his life he lived chiefly on tea, using it three times a day. His pipe was his first companion in the morning, and last at night. He never remembered to have taken a dose of physic in his life, prior to his last fatal accident, nor having a day's illness but one.

Lord Bacon, John Evelyn, and Sir William Temple.

We have already spoken of Bacon's attachment to gardens and to rural affairs, which one almost fancies, is shown even in the speech which he made before the nobility, when first taking his seat in the High Court of Chancery, he hoped "that the same brambles that grow about justice, might be rooted out;" adding that "fresh justice was the sweetest."