THE CHELSEA " PHYSICKE GARDEN' 



have watched the brown-sailed barges and the gay pleasure-boats 

 pass up and down ? Nor was Sir Hans Sloan the only distinguished 

 man to come there ; many others, eminent in various walks of 

 life, have sat, and rested, and chatted, beneath the cedars, and 

 watched old Father Thames go by. Evelyn could not have done 

 so, for he visited the garden when the cedars were only two years 

 old, but that they interested him we may be sure, for, as elsewhere 

 stated, he introduced the tree to this country. 



Tradition says that Dean Swift came here, and in all proba- 

 bility he did, and perhaps pencilled a note to Stella beneath the 

 spreading branches, with the sunlit river sparkling before his 

 eyes, for the garden was over fifty years old when the Dean of 

 St. Patrick's published his " Gulliver's Travels." Here, in any case, 

 came generations of students, the learned botanists, and doctors 

 of medicine, and surgeon-apothecaries, of the future. They were 

 all apprentices of the Apothecaries' Society ; industrious some, 

 and idle others, according to the manner of apprentices to Art, 

 Science, or commercial pursuits, from time immemorial. And 

 among the head-gardeners (later styled " curators "), and the 

 Professors, and Demonstrators, whose duty it was to lecture to 

 the apprentices, were many known to fame, and others who were 

 unknown, only because the science of horticulture is not so generally 

 attractive as it well might be. Sir Joseph Banks, the naturalist, 

 founder of the Royal Institution, who was a liberal benefactor 

 to the garden, is said to have begun his botanical studies there, 

 under the auspices of the venerable Philip Miller, F.R.S., before 

 mentioned, who, besides being for forty-eight years gardener to 

 the Worshipful Company of Apothecaries, was also a member of 

 the Botanic Society of Florence. 



Born in 1691, Miller left a name highly distinguished among 

 horticulturalists. His great work was " The Gardener's Dictionary," 

 and it set forth the best methods then known of improving the 

 kitchen, fruit, or flower garden, and the nursery. The hope of 

 acclimatizing the vine had not in his time been abandoned, for 

 Miller's book gives instructions for the management of a vineyard, 

 and for making and preserving the wine according to the practice 

 of experienced wine-growers in the several wine countries of 

 Europe ; and it also gave directions for the cultivation of all sorts 

 of timber trees. Miller was not the only officer of the garden who 



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