104? Notes on Gardens and Country Seats ; — 



is, appeared to us the only redeeming point in the duke's 

 gardening operations at Blenheim. The greater part of his 

 other works we regard as injurious to the character of the 

 place ; and in this respect we agree with our elegant and en- 

 lightened correspondent " An Amateur." (See IV. 87.) 



It has been said by some that the Duke of Marlborough would 

 have made an excellent gardener : we cannot allow this, taking the 

 word gardener in a general sense. We have seen no evidence, 

 either at White Knights or Blenheim, of taste or skill in garden- 

 ing as an art of design : we have seen a great love of rare plants, 

 without well knowing what to do with them, and that is all. 

 If the duke had been brought up a gardener, therefore, we do 

 not think he would ever have risen higher than a mere cul- 

 tivator ; he would certainly never have been either a Kent or 

 a Brown. A thousand reflections arise out of the circum- 

 stances connected with the present ruinous state of this princely 

 demesne, but we repress them ; only observing that the character 

 which we heard of the Duke of Marlborough, in Woodstock and 

 Oxford, is very different indeed from that which the Duke of 

 Wellington bears in the neighbourhood of Strathfieldsaye. 



Oxford. — August 13. We passed this day chiefly in looking 

 at the colleges and other public institutions. The ancient garden 

 of Trinity College used to be remarkable for its yew hedges, 

 which are now overgrown, and getting naked below. Yew 

 hedges were planted against walls in former times, because gar- 

 deners had nothing better to cover them ; but they should now 

 give way to the ornamental climbing and creeping shrubs, of which 

 five hundred species and varieties might here be introduced 

 and named. The narrow border in front of the wall might be 

 stocked with numerous species and varieties of bulbs to flower in 

 spring, and these might be succeeded by annuals for summer 

 display. The effect would be most splendid throughout the 

 year, and the names being added to each species might be the 

 means of exciting a taste for plants in many of the students. 

 In all probability, however, the yew hedges are considered as 

 much a part of the college as the stone walls against which they 

 are placed, and, of course, neither will be removed. 



The garden of St. John's College is under the care of Mr. 

 Fairbairn, who is introducing various improvements, and intends 

 ultimately to have, if possible, an approximation to an arboretum, 

 with the different species named. This is as it ought to be, 

 and we could wish to see the same thing attempted in every 

 college garden. What all these gardens, without any exception, 

 might excel in, would be, climbers and creepers on their boundary 

 walls, and mignonette in the crevices of their paved open courts, 

 and at the bases of the walls of the gravelled courts, as Mr. 

 Fairbairn has successfully exemplified in the gravelled court of 



