for which he receives, free of any further charge, the published Proceedings and Transactions of the Society; a portion of the rare seeds and plants distributed; admission to all meetings, and to the library; with, lastly, the privilege of sending non-members to the meetings in Regent Street (which are so many minor and more frequent exhibitions, where also plants are shown and prizes conferred), and of obtaining twenty-four tickets of admission, to be used at either of the three principal exhibitions, on the payment of 3s. 6d. each; beyond that number 5s. each must be paid. How the funds thus obtained are expended we have partly seen, but a brief notice of the chief items of the past year's expenditure, apart from the ordinary expenses of the gardens, will show the matter still more usefully. Besides the publication of the Catalogue, the Society laid out 7217. in importing foreign plants and seeds; 3407. upon the improvement of the hot-houses at the gardens, and 8337. in medals and other rewards to gardeners. The first of these items involves some interesting matter connected with the Society's operations, which may be illustrated by an extract from the Gardener's Chronicle,' where we learn that Mr. Hartweg (a gentleman specially engaged by the Horticultural Society, as their collector) was in March last at Bogota, the metropolis of the republic of New Granada, on the point of starting for the town of Guaduas, a place 5000 feet above the sea, in a thickly-wooded country, and thence he was to proceed to Carthagena, on his return to England. His collections from Popayan and elsewhere filled fourteen chests, in which were twenty-five species of orchidaceæ, several fine plants of Thiebaudia floribunda, four boxes of roots and cuttings in earth, 121 kinds of seed, and about 4000 dried specimens. At the present time an additional evidence of the vigour of the Society's operations is afforded by the recent departure from the gardens of Mr. Fortune to China, on a special mission to collect whatever wealth of flowers, or fruits, or trees, may be opened to us, by the political changes in a country where we have before obtained so many important horticultural productions. The value of all this it is impos sible to estimate with any accuracy in detail; it is only by looking at the state of gardening before the establishment of the Society and now that we can rightly estimate its labours.

In the middle ages a garden seems to have been either an orchard, or a place laid out into walks by high and thickly-grown hedges, or a grove, to any or all of which an arbour seems to have been very commonly established as the favourite spot. James I. of Scotland, in describing his first sight of Jane Beaufort, afterwards his queen, whilst a prisoner in the Castle of Windsor, describes such a garden in the following passage:

"Now was there maide fast by the touris wall
A garden faire, and in the corneris set
Ane herbere grene, with wandis long and small
Railit about, and so with treeis set

*

Was all the place, and hawthorn hedges knet,
That lyfe was none, walkyng there forbye
That myght within scarce any wight espye.

"So thick the bewis and the leves grene
Beschudit all the alleyes that there were,

*Living person.

† Boughs.

Beshadowed.

And myddis every herbere might be sene

The scharp grene swete jenepere,

Growing so fair with branches here and there,

That as it semyt to a lyfe without,

The bewis spred the herbere all about."

Chaucer, in his poem of the Flower and the Leaf,' had previously described a very similar arbour, in which, it is worthy of notice, he exhibits a perfect appreciation of the qualities that to this day make our English lawns the admiration of strangers; the grass of the arbour, he says, was

66

"So small, so thick, so short, so fresh of hue."

It was, in all probability, gardens of the nature here indicated that Fitz-Stephen refers to, in his description of London during the reign of Henry II., where he says, near to the houses of the suburbs, the citizens have gardens and orchards planted with trees, large, beautiful, and one joining to another;" it is, at least, tolerably evident that as James mentions nothing about the chief feature of our gardens-flowers-when describing some attached to the chief palace during the reign of Henry V., there could have been very little to mention; and that little must have been less with the citizens of London between two and three centuries before. Of gardening, in the sixteenth century, we get a pretty good idea from various sources; thus, it appears the opulent Earl of Northumberland, in 1512, had in his household of one hundred and sixty persons, just one gardener, who attended "hourly in the garden for setting of herbs, and clipping of knotts, and sweeping the said garden clean;" and, of course, if these duties comprised the whole end and aim of gardening at the period, why, no doubt, one man was enough. The knotted garden was evidently the favourite style of laying out grounds with our ancestors. Bacon speaks of "the knotts or figures" being formed of "divers coloured earthe," and ridicules them as toys for children.

As to vegetable productions for the table at this time, Hume tell us that when the queen wanted a salad, she was obliged to despatch a special messenger to Holland or Flanders, since neither that, nor carrots, turnips, or other edible roots were introduced till near the close of Henry VIII.'s reign; whilst Hentzner's notices of Nonesuch, and Whitehall, show us very clearly the state of the more ornamental departments. The grounds of the palace built by Henry, and which having no equal—

"in art or fame

Britons deservedly do Nonesuch name,"

is described as "accompanied with parks full of deer, delicious gardens, groves ornamented with trellis-work, cabinets of verdure, and walks so embowered by trees, that it seems to be a place pitched upon by Pleasure herself to dwell in along with Health. In the pleasure and artificial gardens are many columns and pyramids of marble, two fountains that spout water one round the other like a pyramid, upon which are perched small birds that stream water out of their bills. In the grove of Diana is a very agreeable fountain, with Acteon turned into a stag as he was sprinkled by the goddess and the nymphs, with inscriptions. There is, besides, another pyramid of marble full of concealed pipes, which spirt upon all who come within their reach"-a feature that our forefathers seem to have been very fond of, for Whitehall possessed a similar piece of practical joking. Even here we find no mention of ornamental shrubs or flowers, though, in a survey taken of the palace in 1650, it appears there were then six plants of the now common inhabitant of our smallest gardens,-Cowper's

"Lilac, various in array,-now white,

Now sanguine, and her beauteous head now set
With purple spikes pyramidal, as if

Studious of ornament, yet unresolved

Which hue she most approved, she chose them all,"

but which were evidently rare enough at the period of the survey from the particularity of their description—" trees which bear no fruit, but only a very pleasant smell." Other features of the gardens of the time were the smooth bowlinggreens, and the mazes which " well formed a man's height, may, perhaps,” as the writer of the New Orchard,' 1597, tells us, "make your friend wander in gathering berries till he cannot recover himself without your help." The theory of gardening was at the time, and long after, in an equally brilliant state. One amusing illustration may be borrowed from Evelyn's translation of a French work, 'Quintinye's Complete Gardener;' where a superstition, as prevalent in England as in the neighbouring country, was thus noticed." I solemnly declare," he says, "that, after a diligent observation of the moon's changes for thirty years together, and an inquiry whether they had any influence on gardening, the affirmative of which has been so long established among us, I perceived that it was no weightier than old wives' tales, and that it had been advanced by unexperienced gardeners. I have therefore followed what appeared most reasonable, and rejected what was otherwise in short, graft in what time of the moon you please, if your graft be good, and grafted in a proper stock, provided you do it like an artist, you will be sure to succeed. In the same manner, sow what sorts

:

of grain you please, and plant as you please, in any quarter of the moon, I'll answer for your success, the first and last day of the moon being equally favourable." The history of the public gardens in and near London, since the sixteenth century, illustrates, with tolerable completeness, the history of the changes of taste in gardening, and the general tenor of its progress. During the reign of Charles II., Greenwich and St. James's Park were laid out under the direction of the eminent French landscape designer, Le Nôtre, who had been invited to this country by Charles, with the express view of introducing the splendid French style, and many of his subjects were not slow to profit, each according to his means, by the example. Evelyn tells us of "one Loader, an anchor-smith in Greenwich, who grew so rich as to build a house in the street, with gardens, orangeries, canals, and other magnificence." Kensington Gardens were commenced by William III., who stamped upon them the impress of his own, and we believe, it may be added, the national tastes of the time; when in our gardens all sorts of "vegetable sculpture,"-the

"wonders of the sportive shears

Fair Nature mis-adorning, there were found;
Globes, spiral columns, pyramids, and piers
With spouting urns and budding statues crown'd,
And horizontal dials on the ground,

In living box, by cunning artists traced;
And galleys trim, on no long voyage bound,
But by their roots there ever anchor'd fast."*

* G. West.