GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES 



more formidable ceremony, we are assured, than going to kiss a 

 young Queen's hand. There might be seen Lord Melbourne, 

 Lord John Russell, Palmerston, Guizot, and notabilities by the 

 legion and the garden itself was a perennial joy ! Lord Jeffreys 

 describes " a sweet walk under the cedars .... where he listened 

 in vain for the nightingales, though Lord Holland and Allen chal- 

 lenged them to answer by divers fat and asthmatical whistles." 



This was in 1840, the year of Lord Holland's death, which 

 brought to a sudden close the most wonderful chapter in the 

 remarkable history of Holland House. Such another era the world 

 can never see again, unless one gifted like the third Lord Holland 

 should arise, capable of attracting a company as brilliant as that 

 which he gathered round him in the earlier half of the nineteenth 

 century, to a house as picturesquely and historically interesting. 



226 



