94 KEW GARDENS 



Tliis plan was much on the model of what 

 had grown up at Kew, to which let us return, 

 after recalling that before its grounds came into 

 note, Queen Caroline had begun or enlarged 

 the gardens about Richmond Lodge, extending 

 them over an unkempt flat, as we understand 

 from her private laureate, Stephen Duck. To 

 poets of his school there was no beauty in 

 heath and wild copses, like the rough patch of 

 Sheen Common still left to the gratitude of our 

 Bank-Holiday age. 



Not so attractive lately shone the plain, 

 A gloomy waste, not worth the Muse's strain ; 

 Where thorny brakes the traveller repell'd, 

 And weeds and thistles overspread the field ; 

 Till royal George, and heav'iily Caroline 

 Bid Nature in harmonious lustre shine ; 

 The sacred fiat thro' the chaos rung 

 And symmetry from wild disorder sprung. 



But Nature might not be trusted to shine 

 here by her own unvarnished charms ; and 

 the Richmond Gardens were bedecked with 

 " follies " in the taste of the time : " Merlin's 

 Cave," that appears to^ have housed a wax- 

 work collection as well as the library of 

 which Stephen Duck was keeper ; a hermitage, 

 inhabited by busts of distinguished men ; a 



