UPPER GARDEN AT KENSINGTON 263 



THE UPPER GARDEN AT KENSINGTON 



(From " The Spectator ") 



I THINK there are as many kinds of gardening as of 

 poetry : your makers of partei'res and flower-gardens 

 are epigrammatists and sonnetteers in this art : 

 contrivers of bowers and grottos, treillages and 

 cascades, are romance writers. Wise and London 

 are our heroic poets ; and if, as a critic, I may 

 single out any passage of their works to commend, 

 I shall take notice of that part in the upper garden 

 at Kensington, which was at first nothing but a 

 gravel pit. It must have been a fine genius for 

 gardening that could have thought of forming such 

 an unsightly hollow into so beautiful an area, and 

 to have hit the eye with so agreeable a scene as 

 that which it is now wrought into. To give this 

 particular spot of ground the greatest effect, they 

 have made a very pleasant contrast ; for as on one 

 side of the walk you see this hollow basin, with its 

 several little plantations lying so conveniently under 

 the eye of the beholder, on the other side of it 

 there appears a seeming mount, made up of trees 

 rising one higher than another in proportion as 

 they approach the centre. A spectator who has 

 not heard this account of it, would think this 

 circular mount was not only a real one, but that 

 it had been actually scooped out of that hollow 

 space which I have before mentioned. I never yet 

 met with any one who has walked in this garden, 



