THE STORY OF THE GARDENS 85 



The Kew mansion of Queen Elizabeth's 

 keeper was furnished with a garden, in which 

 Her Majesty had delivered to her a nosegay, 

 enriched with a valuable jewel and pendants 

 of diamonds, worth four hundred pounds. This 

 offering was only part of a series of handsome 

 gifts that suggest how a visit from royalty in 

 those days must have been indeed a visitation. 

 In Bacon's Essay, Of Gardens, we get some hint 

 what a garden ought to be that seemed worthy 

 of entertaining a queen ; and after this model 

 is said to have been laid out the garden of Moor 

 Park in Hertfordshire. 



The contents ought not well to be under thirty acres 

 of ground, and to be divided into three parts; a green 

 in the entrance, a heath or desert in the going forth, 

 and the main garden in the midst, besides alleys on 

 both sides ; and I like well that four acres of ground 

 be assigned to the green, six to the heath, four and 

 four to either side, and twelve to the main garden. 

 The green hath two pleasures : the one, because nothing 

 is more pleasant to the eye than green grass kept finely 

 shorn ; the other, because it will give you a fair alley in 

 the midst, by which you may go in front upon a stately 

 hedge, which is to enclose the garden : but because the 

 alley will be long, and, in great heat of the year, or day, 

 you ought not to buy the shade in the garden by going 

 in the sun through the green, therefore you are, of either 

 side the green, to plant a covert alley, upon carpenters 1 



