I was visiting Kew, for the purpose of
refreshing my recollection of the famous gardens.
For there, (even as in London people hatch
by heat, chickens) do they hatch—beauty.
There, a tropical warmth, maintains tropical
plants in genial exuberance. Science obtains
knowledge, sentiment, and delectation.
HUMBOLDT ranks the "cultivation and arrangement
of exotic plants" among the "most
precious fruits of European civilisation;" our
own BACON begins his essay on gardens, by
saying, "God Almighty first planted a garden:
and indeed it is the purest of human pleasures."
But no quotation could be half so convincing
on such a subject, as a flower. And who
would not care to see what kind of beauties
of the sort Nature produces in her richest,
hottest regions, where vegetation is Titanic,
and there are giants (of flowers) in the land?
Now, these gardens are a kind of scientific
Paradise in their way. They may be called a
Vegetable Seraglio. In them, a very attractive
class of exiles finds true English protection,
and our country gives amiable shelter to
the most charming of refugees!

The day was a clear glittering spring one,
sharp as silver, with a veined marbly sky.
The Thames was just rippled with a breeze,
and lay in the sunlight like a scaly silver fish.
As I crossed the bridge, I found the village in
very tranquil repose. Turning to the right,
I approached the gateway of the gardens—a
light airy structure, with an elegant gate, and
prettily-carved stone pillars. Before me now
spread the green smooth sward dotted with
bushes, and shaded by trees. The spring
breeze was stirring a Californian Yew on the
right. In the distance Kew Palace gave a
glimpse of itself, quiet, grave, and red, with
an air of homely regality.

This palace was a favourite residence of
George the Third, in conformity with those
domestic tastes which excited so much
pleasantry from Peter Pindar. But now you turn
to the right, to Plant-house, Number one. The
door opens; a flush of heat steals over you;
there is a strange, but not disagreeable, earthy
smell; and you have migrated into New
Holland! For here dwell the Australian
plants, chiefly ProteacÅ“—so named from our
old friend Proteus—they being various in
development. Subtle currents of heat
permeate their veins; and, though they have a
heaven of glass, instead of their own azure,
they look thriving and happy. The effect is
somewhat like that of a ball-room, on the
whole—just a little unnatural, but very pretty.
Translate the Banksias and Dryandras into
English female names, and indulge the fancy;
over-head, in the centre, the Acacias are
blossoming, just as airily as the bubbling of
champagne. But, if the association be
unworthy of those fairy-like blossoms of ghostly
primrose-colour, take a literary association
instead, and remember that it was down a
walk of Acacias that Gibbon strolled the
evening he finished the last sentence of the
last page of his history! As you stroll round
the narrow path, fretted with green leaves,
you feel something like the south mixing like
wine with your blood; but once more the
door opens, and out you go into the spring
again.

Leaving this plant-house (you will turn
round, or you ought to turn round, to look at
its handsome architecture), you stroll down
the chief promenade. To the left lies another
building, which they call the Orangery, now
the chosen place of the pines. Here and there
are a few orange trees, the fruit glittering
like lamps. But the tender pines (Coniferœ)
are the attraction; here are the famous pines
of Norfolk Island—which we derive from that
prison of our convicts, and which have a
drooping sadness of look worthy of their
origin. Pause particularly, and look at the
tree called Dacrydium cupressinum, falling in
rillets of saddest green, most tremulously
pendent. What a famous tree is the cypress
—in all literatures typical of sorrow!

"In his garland as he stood,
Ye might discern a cypress bud—"

says Milton of Hymen, at the marriage of the
Marchioness of Winchester. Of all the trees
you plant, none will follow its brief master
but the hated cypress, said Horace. Its use
among the ancients was a sign that a house
was funesta, or afflicted with death, for this
reason, says Kirchmann (de Funeribus) that
slips from it will not grow. How different
this tree from its neighbours in this same
building—the camellias! The camellia, so
green, and symmetrical, and compact, with its
flowers at once as fresh as wild roses, and as
sharply carved as cameos, looks like a bay-tree
with giant roses growing on it. She is
the prima donna of the East, with a flower in
her hair. In this same house, too, are gum-trees,
and camphor-trees. The camphor-tree
is the laurel of Japan (Laurus camphora),
and more useful than laurels, par excellence,
generally. Its pale yellow leaves look like
medicine in blossom; they are the very poetry
of physic, and might have been worn by
Romeo's apothecary.

Once more you pass out of an artificial
Eden into the fresh air. There stands before
you a Turkey oak, looking like a Pasha. And
there are planted, but still in embryo, young
deodars—an infant avenue. But of all the
trees and shrubs in the open air, none is more
beautiful than a certain weeping birch. A
comic gentleman would say, that it is natural
a tree should weep itself, which is so often the
cause of weeping in others! But how its
slender and quivering branches sweep the
ground like a shower of rain, how it waves
like a crape veil over the sward!

But now let us direct our attention to the
building, which is the peculiar pride and
glory of the gardens—the Palm-House. The
sun-light falls on its pale green roof, as we
draw near; and approach a light, lofty and