THE CHELSEA “ PHYSICKE GARDEN” 
have watched the brown-sailed barges and the gay pleasure-boats 
pass up and down ? Nor was Sir Hans Sloan the only distinguished 
man to come there; many others, eminent in various walks of 
life, have sat, and rested, and chatted, beneath the cedars, and 
watched old Father Thames go by. Evelyn could not have done 
so, for he visited the garden when the cedars were only two years 
old, but that they interested him we may be sure, for, as elsewhere 
stated, he introduced the tree to this country. 
Tradition says that Dean Swift came here, and in all proba- 
bility he did, and perhaps pencilled a note to Stella beneath the 
spreading branches, with the sunlit river sparkling before his 
eyes, for the garden was over fifty years old when the Dean of 
St. Patrick’s published his ‘* Gulliver’s Travels.” Here, in any case, 
came generations of students, the learned botanists, and doctors 
of medicine, and surgeon-apothecaries, of the future. They were 
all apprentices of the Apothecaries’ Society; industrious some, 
and idle others, according to the manner of apprentices to Art, 
Science, or commercial pursuits, from time immemorial. And 
among the head-gardeners (later styled ‘‘ curators’’), and the 
Professors, and Demonstrators, whose duty it was to lecture to 
the apprentices, were many known to fame, and others who were 
unknown, only because the science of horticulture is not so generally 
attractive as it well might be. Sir Joseph Banks, the naturalist, 
founder of the Royal Institution, who was a liberal benefactor 
to the garden, is said to have begun his botanical studies there, 
under the auspices of the venerable Philip Miller, F.R.S., before 
mentioned, who, besides being for forty-eight years gardener to 
the Worshipful Company of Apothecaries, was also a member of 
the Botanic Society of Florence. 
Born in 1691, Miller left a name highly distinguished among 
horticulturalists. His great work was ‘‘ The Gardener’s Dictionary,” 
and it set forth the best methods then known of improving the 
kitchen, fruit, or flower garden, and the nursery. The hope of 
acclimatizing the vine had not in his time been abandoned, for 
Miller’s book gives instructions for the management of a vineyard, 
and for making and preserving the wine according to the practice 
of experienced wine-growers in the several wine countries of 
Europe ; and it also gave directions for the cultivation of all sorts 
of timber trees. Miller was not the only officer of the garden who 
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