504 ^otes on Arbor etiims : — 



made various similar improvements. We found the place in 

 very high order, and the walks juSt as we could wish them. In 

 the flower-garden near the house were two large evergreen mag- 

 nolias ; one large M. conspicua ; a bush of green tea, 6 ft. or 8 ft. 

 in diameter, ripening seed ; and in the pleasure-grounds, at 

 some distance, were numerous fine specimens of foreign trees 

 and shrubs, planted, it is said, by Mrs. North, the lady of 

 Bishop North, about fifty years ago. Among these we may 

 notice ^^cer striatum, 16 ft. high, a very handsome tree, covered 

 with seed; ^. rubrum, 50 ft. high; Staphylea pinnata, 15 ft. 

 high ; Corylus Colurna, 50 ft. high ; Cupressus /hyoides, 20 ft. 

 high ; and various other specimens, the dimensions of all of 

 which have been kindly entered, by the bishop's permission, in 

 our Return Paper, by his gardener, Mr. M'Donald, who took 

 the very greatest pains to measure them correctly. We saw 

 here a female black Italian poplar, one of the seed catkins of 

 which had been broken off prematurely, and stuck in the 

 branches of another tree, where it looked like a mass of insects. 

 On examination, we found it to contain such a quantity of cotton, 

 that we have sent it to Manchester, to ascertain whether it is of 

 a quality that would be worth manufacturing. If it should turn 

 out to be so, the culture of this tree, already so profitable from 

 the immense quantity of timber which it produces in a very few 

 years, will acquire a new interest. The female black Italian poplar 

 is by no means common : we only know of one other specimen, 

 which is in the garden of the London Horticultural Society. 



In Farnham Castle, the hall is a large room, the general pro- 

 portions of which are not bad ; but in point of architecture it has 

 no pretensions whatever. There is not even a cornice under the 

 ceiling ; and it is lighted by two tiers of windows, a mode of 

 lighting which always suggests to our mind the idea of common- 

 place composition on the part of the architect. It is^seldom, 

 indeed, that the architect has an opportunity of deviating from 

 the usual proportions of windows, and, consequently, from the 

 practice of placing one tier of them over another ; and, therefore, 

 when a church, or a large hall like that at Farnham Castle, comes 

 under his pencil, he ought to seize the opportunity of deviating 

 from common practices, and producing something like an ex- 

 ternal feature which would indicate what was within. This 

 subject never occurs to us without bringing before our mind's 

 eye the Bank of England and the National Gallery at Charing 

 Cross, with their blank windows, introduced, as it were, to im- 

 bue these large buildings with a commonplace expression. That 

 the public should bear with the latter building is a proof of the 

 low state of taste for the fine arts among the general mass of 

 society in this country. At the sale of the books and drawings 

 of the late Mr. Nash, there was a design for a National Gallery 



