GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES 



ance. However, there are certainly some points of difference, the 

 greatest, of course, being in the presence of trees which have been 

 planted and grown up in the place of those felled by Sarah's order ; 

 they make the garden shadier than in her time. If any survive of 

 those she spared, their trunks are now dingy with London smoke, 

 so that their twigs and branches are all relieved as touches of pure 

 black, whether against the sweet new green of their spring foliage, 

 or the prevailing dull russet of the early metropolitan " fall." 

 Another change arises from the defection of the singing birds ; 

 the place is no longer vocal with their songs as it was two hundred 

 years ago, for, if less than a century earlier than now, nightingales 

 sang, as they are said to have done, in the grounds of Carlton 

 House, which was, so to speak, next door, then they also sang in 

 the garden of which I am writing ; and if the rooks, as we are told, 

 had a settlement in the Carlton House gardens, we may be sure 

 they sometimes visited the lawn at Marlborough House to fend 

 for breakfast, cawing as loudly for a good fat worm, as little Tommy 

 Tucker sang sweetly for " white bread and butter." But alas ! 

 the traffic of St. James's Street has scared away the nightingales, 

 and as for the rooks, they have either been made into pies this 

 many a year, or they migrated for good and all when Carlton House 

 was demolished in 1827. 



It is chiefly in the matter of flowers that the twentieth-century 

 garden is better off than the eighteenth. In cultivated areas the 

 smile of Flora is more radiant, the embroidery on her robe more 

 vivid and varied, than of yore ; the sweet pea, the dahlia, an end- 

 less variety of roses, geraniums, and chrysanthemums the tall 

 Japanese lilies, the rhododendrons, and scores of other flowering 

 shrubs, all of which abound in Queen Alexandra's flower-garden 

 to-day, were unknown in the days of Queen Anne. However, with 

 the long list of blossoming plants which even Bacon knew, all of 

 which he says in his famous essay flourish " in the climate of 

 London," and with the offspring of Dutch William's parterres to 

 fall back upon, I have no doubt but that London and Wise, and 

 other fashionable horticulturists of the eighteenth century, con- 

 trived to make almost as brave a show as does the gardener of 

 to-day. 



But notwithstanding the fact that few changes can have taken 

 place in the garden, I found that when, according to my habit, I 



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