604 OPENING OF THE GARDENS 



effected in so incredibly short a time, notwithstanding the 

 difficulties to \Yhich you have alluded, and which appeared at 



" That which, last year, was still a vague conception, is, to- 

 day, a reality : and, I trust, will be accepted as a valuable attempt, 

 at least, to re-unite the science and art of gardening to the 

 sister Arts of Architecture, Sculpture, and Painting. 



" This union existed in the best periods of Art, when the same 

 feeling pervaded and the same principles regulated them all ; 

 and if the misuse and misapplication of these principles in later 

 times have forced again upon us the simple study and imitation 

 of nature, individual arts have suffered by their disjunction, and 

 the time seems now arrived when they may once more combine, 

 without the danger of being cramped by pedantic and arbitrary 

 rules of taste. 



" The Commissioners of 185 1, whose mission it is to encourage 

 the arts and sciences, as applied to productive industry, gladly 

 welcome your Society as one of the first of those bodies, devoted 

 to the promotion of special branches of these arts and sciences, 

 that has availed itself of the enlarged means of development 

 offered by the Commissioners on their estate. They are glad to 

 find in your present success, and in the generous support of the 

 public, the confirmation of their belief that in securing space on 

 which, in unison with each other, and with a systematic inter- 

 change of mutual assistance, separate societies and departments 

 might attain to a degree of usefulness which their present con- 

 finement and isolation must materially lessen, the Commissioners 

 had correctly appreciated the great want of the day and the 

 requirements of the public, for whose benefit alone they should 

 work, and by whose assistance alone they can hope to prosper. 



" We already see, to the south, rising, as it were, by magic, 

 the commencement of a noble work entirely the result of the 

 voluntary efforts of that public ; and this Garden, itself the 

 offspring of the Great Exhibition of 1851, will hardly be com- 

 pleted ere that Exhibition shall have been rivalled, and, I trust, 

 even surpassed, by the beauty and success of that which we hope 

 next year to witness. 



" This Garden will then open an additional source of enjoy- 

 ment to the thousands who may be expected to crowd the new 

 Crystal Palace of Industry. Nay, we may hope that it will, at 

 no distant day, form the inner court of a vast quadrangle of 

 public buildings, rendered easily accessible by the broad roads 



