FULHAM PALACE 



at length at a turn in the walk where attention is arrested by a 

 magnificent tree of extraordinary girth, size, and shape a tree 

 that almost seems to block further progress. It dominates this 

 part of the gardens, stretching its giant arms benevolently right 

 and left ; on the one hand almost to where the soldiers drilled, on 

 the other to the ferneries and greenhouses. It is truly a patriarchal 

 and beautiful tree and daily I surveyed it in admiration, and, 

 ignorant though I am on such subjects, even I ought to have known 

 it by the large five-lobed and silky leaves, resembling those of the 

 sycamore, and by its gracefully-pendulous seed-pods, hanging low 

 from the branches much as tinsel balls do on a Christmas tree. 

 But I had noted no peeling of its bark, and misled by its unusual 

 size and freshness, I did not recognize it, and therefore one day 

 I asked the head-gardener for information, and the surprise was 

 as great as the snub, when he replied, " Only a London Plane ! " 

 Well ! if this be so, among all the rare and splendid trees, indigenous 

 and otherwise, in the Bishop of London's garden, none lives in 

 my memory as does that magnificent specimen of the commonest 

 metropolitan tree ! 



We turn from it sharply to the right, and leave on our left a 

 side-walk, where rows of gorgeous tulips flaunt their brilliant 

 cup-like flowers ; tall, erect, triumphant specimens of the gardener's 

 science all of them are ; showing every tint from deepest prune 

 almost black to flame- colour and pure white, and these last 

 are dazzling when sun shines through the petals. Were we to 

 follow this path we should arrive at a part of the domain left, 

 deliberately, more or less wild and at the rockeries and shrub- 

 beries, beyond which, where the path twists and turns, is a little 

 foot-bridge over the moat, that here is very dusky and mysterious, 

 and overhung with trees. On the further side of the bridge is a 

 door, which closes with a spring, not to be opened from without, a 

 door that leads straight into the grassy churchyard of Fulham, 

 where " heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap " ; and where 

 many of the Bishops of London lie buried. The churchyard is 

 a short cut to the town. 



But we do not follow that path, for the choicest bits of the old 

 garden are yet to show. We pass instead through an iron gate- 

 way, and find ourselves in the " walled garden," a kitchen and 

 fruit garden of immense acreage. It "abounds in fruit, and in 



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