April 19, 1877. ] 



JOURNAL OP HORTICULTUKE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 



295 



and a Priced Catalogue of Fruit and Forest Trees, Shrube, and 

 HerbaoeouB Plants ; tbe whole adapted to Villa Grounds from 

 One Perch to Que Hundred Acres in Extent ; " and the other, 

 " Observations on laying-ont Farms in the Scotch Stjle adapted 

 to Eugland." 



Mr. Loudon entered on the farm at Great Tew at Michael- 

 mas, 1808, and left it in February, 1811, General Stratton pay- 

 ing him a considerable sum tor his lease, stock, and the im- 

 provements he bad effected. 



The Continent, after having been long closed to English 

 visitors, was thrown open in 1813 by the general rising against 

 Napoleon Bonaparte, and it presented an ample field to an 

 inqniiing mind like that of Mr. London. Accordingly, after 

 having made the necessary preparations, he sailed from Har- 

 wich on the 16th of March. He first lauded at Gottenburg 

 and was deUghted with Sweden, its roads, its people, and its 

 systems of education, but he was too impatient to visit the 

 theatre of war to stay long in Sweden, and he proceeded by 

 way of Memel to Komgsberg, where he arrived on the 14th of 

 April. In this country he found everywhere traces of war : 

 skeletons of horses lay bleaching in the fields, the roads were 

 broken up, and the country houses in ruins. At Elbing he 

 fonnd the streets tilled with the goods and cattle of the country 

 people, who had poured into the town for protection from the 

 French army, which was then passing within two-miles of it, 

 and near Marienburg he passed through a bivouac of two 

 thousand Russian troops, who in their dress and general ap- 

 pearance looked more like convicts than soldiers. He now 

 passed through Swedish Pomerania, and on approaching Ber- 

 lin found the long avenues of trees leading to that city filled 

 with foot passengers, carriages full of ladies, and waggons full 

 of luggage alt proceeding there for protection, and forming a 

 very striking picture as be passed through them by moonlight. 



He remained at Berlin from the 14th of May to the 1st of 

 June, and then proceeded to Frankfort on the Oder ; here, at 

 the tabic d'li'''tc, he dined with several Prussian officers, who, 

 supposing him to be a Frenchman, sat for some time in per- 

 fect silence; but on hearing him tpeak German one said to the 

 other " He must be English," and when he told them that 

 he came from London they all rose, one springing over tbe 

 table in his haste, and crowded round him, shaking hands, 

 kisfing him, and overwhelming him with compliments, as be 

 was the first Englishman tbey had ever seen. He then pro- 

 ceeded through Posen to Warsaw, where he arrived on the 

 6th of June. 



Afterwards he travelled towards Russia, but was stopped at the 

 little town of Tykocyn, and detained there three months from 

 some informality in his passport. When this difficulty was 

 overcome he proceeded by Grodno to Wilna, through a country 

 covered with the remains of the French army — horses and 

 men lying dead by the roadside, and bands of wild-looking 

 Cossacks scouring the country. 



Mr. London reached St. Petersburg on the 30th of October, 

 just before the breaking-up of the bridge, and he remained 

 there threeorfour months, after which he proceeded to Moscow, 

 where he arrived on the -ith of March, 1814, after having en- 

 countered various diflionlties on the road. Once, in particular, 

 the horses in his carriage being unable to drag it through a 

 snowdrift, the postilions very coolly unharnessed them and 

 trotted off, telling him that they would bring fresh horses in 

 the morning, and that he would be in no danger from the 

 wolves if he would keep the windows of his carriage close and 

 the leather curtains down. 



When he reached Moscow he found the houses yet black 

 from the recent tiro, and the streets filled with the ruins of 

 churches and noble manaions. Soon after his arrival news 

 was received of the capture of Paris and the entrance of the 

 allied sovereigns into that city, but the Russians took this 

 intelligence so coolly that, though it reached Moscow on the 

 25th of April, the illuminations in honour of it did not take 

 place till the "■th of May. He left Moscow on the 2nd of June, 

 and reached Kiov on the l.ith; here he had an interview with 

 General Rapp, on account of some informality in his passport. 

 He then proceeded to ('raoow, and thence to Vienna, after 

 which he visited Prague, Dresden, and Leipsic, passing through 

 Magdeburgh to Hamburgh, where he embarked for England, 

 and reached Yarmouth on the 27th of September, 1814. 



During this long and iuterestmg journey Mr. Loudon visited 

 and took views of nearly all tbe palaces and large rural resi- 

 dences in the countries through which he passed, and he 

 visited all the principal gardens, frequently going two or three 

 days' journey out of his route if ho heard of any garden that ho 



thought worth seeing. He also visited most of the eminent 

 scientific men in the different cities he passed through, and 

 was elected a member of the Imperial Society of Moscow, the 

 Natural History Society at Berlin, the Royal Economical 

 Society at Potsdam, and many others. I have often wondered 

 that on his return home he did not publish hia travels, as the 

 Continent was then comparatively so little known that a narra- 

 tive of what he saw, illustrated by his sketchep, would have 

 been highly interesting. Business of a very unpleaeaut nature, 

 however, awaited him, and probably so completely occupied 

 his mind as to leave no room for anything else. As he knew 

 nothing of business of this nature it is not surprising that his 

 speculations turned out badly, and for more than twelve 

 months be was involved in pecuniary difficulties. I am unable 

 to give all the details of his suffering during this period, as it 

 was a subject he never spoke of, and the allusions to it in his 

 memorandum books are by no means explicit. It appears, 

 however, that after having made several fruitless journeys, in- 

 cluding one to Paris in 1815, in the hope of recovering some 

 part of the property, he was compelled to submit to the loss of 

 nearly the whole, and that his health was very seriously 

 injured by the anxieties he underwent. 



About this time (ISIG) his mother and sisters left the 

 country, and he having determined that in future they should 

 reside with him, took a house at Bayswater called The Hermit- 

 age, which had a large garden annexed. His health was now 

 seriously impaired, but his mind always seemed to acquire 

 additional vigour from the feebleness of his body ; and as he 

 was unable to use so much exertion as he hud formerly done 

 in landscape gardening, he amused himself by trying experi- 

 ments relating to the construction Of hothouses, and by having 

 several of different kinds erected in his garden. 



In August, 1815, a paper had been publiBhed in the " Trans- 

 actions of the Horticultural Society," by Sir George Mackenzie 

 of Coul, " on the form which the glass of a forcing house 

 ought to have in order to receive the greatest possible quantity 

 of rays from the sun." J'his form Sir (George conceived to be 

 that of a globe; but as it seemed impracticable to make a 

 hothouse globular, he proposed to make the roof the segment 

 of a circle. Mr. Loudon appears to have been very much 

 struck with this paper, but he saw faults in the plan which he 

 thought might be amended, and he tried bouses with curvi- 

 linear roofs of various kinds in order to ascertain which was 

 tbe best. lie also tried a house with what he called ridge-and- 

 furrow glaziug — a plan which has since been carried out on a 

 magnificent scale by Mr. Paxton in tbe Duke of Devonshire's 

 splendid conservatory at Chatsworth. While these houses 

 were in progress be wrote a work entitled " Remarks on tbe 

 Construction of Hothouses, Ac, " which was published in 1817. 

 Shortly afterwards he invented a new kind of sashbar, of 

 which he gave a description, together with sketches of the hot- 

 houses and details of their construction, in a quarto pamphlet 

 entitled " Sketches of Curvilinear Hothouses, Ac," which was 

 published in 1818. The profits of this bar he was to have 

 shared with the ironmonger by whom it was sold, but I believe 

 he never reaped any pecuniary advantage from it. He also 

 published in folio another work in the same year entitled " A 

 Comparative View of the Common and Curvilinear Modes of 

 Roofing Hothouses." 



He now seems to have determined on devoting his time 

 principally to his pen, and he began to collect materials for 

 the well-known " Encyclopffidia of Crardening." It is probable 

 that the first idea of this work had occurred to him while he 

 was travelling from the great number of gardens he had seen 

 and the various modes of gardening that be had found prac- 

 tised in different countries. At any rate, he determined to 

 commence his work with a history of gardening and a descrip- 

 tion of tbe gardens of various countries, introducing illustra- 

 tive drawings engraved on wood and printed with the text, this 

 being, I believe, the first time any engravings, except mere 

 outlines, had been printed in that manner. It was necessary 

 in order to complete his plan that he should see the gardens 

 of France and Italy in the same manner as he had seen those 

 of the north of Europe, and for this purpose he determined to 

 set out on another tour, though his health was at that time so 

 very indifferent that one of his friends who saw him at Dover 

 told him he looked more fit to keep his bed than to set out on 

 a journey. Mr. Loudon, however, was not easily deterred from 

 anything that he had resolved upon, and he proceeded by way 

 of Calais and Abbeville to Paris, where he arrived on the 30lh 

 of May, 181!t. After seeing everything deserving of notice in 

 Paris, and becoming acquainted with many eminent men there 



