THE 



Juxe, 1860. 



^ HE HoKTicTTLTUitAi Society has taken a 

 new lease of its life. At the moment of 

 apparent extinction it has undergone rapid 

 juvenescence, and, Phoenix like, may now 

 spurn the disasters that brought it to the 

 dust. The proposal of a grand garden at 

 Kensington Gore took root in the public 

 mind instanter. The requisite £50,000 was 

 obtained as soon as asked for, and instead 

 of a debt of £8000, bearing interest, and 

 contract debts amounting to £2700, which 

 the Council had to face at the beginning of 

 1859, there is a prospect now of continually 

 increasing resources, and the Society enjoys undivided favour with the 

 general public. At the anniversary meeting, held on the 1st of May, the 

 whole story of the Kensington project was related, from first to last, in 

 the report. After stating the first negociations with the Royal Com- 

 missioners for the Exhibition of 1851, the following brief summary 

 is given of the terms agreed upon for a lease of twenty acres: — The 

 Commissioners to expend £50~000 upon a highly decorated Italian 

 Arcade, and certain costly earthworks required as the foundation of a 

 garden. The Commissioners to claim no rent until the expenses of the 

 Society — which include interest upon money borrowed — shall have been 

 defrayed; all income beyond such expenses to be apportioned in the 

 manner following ; that is to say, interest to be paid by the Society on the 

 £50,000 borrowed by the Commissioners, and then, as rent, one moiety of 

 any surplus that may have arisen during each year. The Commissioners 

 to grant the Society a lease of the land for thirty- one years. The amount 

 of annual expenditure and the mode of general management to be deter- 

 mined by a joint Committee, consisting of six members, of whom three 

 shall be named by the Commissioners. The Society to lay out a sum 

 equal to that of the Commissioners in the formation of the garden, one 



VOL. III. — NO. VI. ° 



