CHISWICK HOUSE 
A feature of the conservatory is the bank, or thicket, of magnifi- 
cent camellia shrubs, or rather trees, for they rise from the ground 
to the roof. They extend the entire length of the glass-house. 
which is three hundred feet; the glossy beauty of their smooth 
dark leaves would render them attractive at any season ; even when 
out of flower, but in the earlier months of the year, when, from 
base to summit, they are laden with blossoms—rpse, scarlet and 
white—the effect of the long perspective of the conservatory, 
studied from either extremity, is really wonderful. The camellia 
is an aristocratic flower, almost as much so, although in shape and 
manner of growth it differs widely from it, as the stately white 
Nile Lily, of which the conservatory at Chiswick shows fine speci- 
mens. There are fashions in floriculture as in everything else, 
and except in old-fashioned greenhouses like this, one rarely 
meets now with the exquisite waxen flowers that Japan and China 
sent to us. Yet they are no more stiff than the sunflower or the 
dahlia, or the hollyhock, which we admire so much, and they are 
quite as decorative, and more lasting. Why, then, are they 
banished ? Is it because some thirty years ago a craze set in for 
cottage flowers, old English flowers, to the exclusion of foreign 
ones? Up to a certain point the preference was explained, since 
no one can deny the peculiar attractiveness and sweetness of such 
—but it ran to absurd extremes. The glorious scarlet geranium, 
for instance, was voted vulgar, although the vulgarity only lay 
in the bad taste which could plant it in a “ribbon” border, or 
contrast it with the peculiarly inharmonious yellow of the cal- 
ceolaria ; consequently many gardens have been denied altogether 
the cheerful blaze of “Tom Thumb ” and his brethren; and those 
who in the last generation pretended to special culture, and arrayed 
themselves in sad-coloured serges, and art muslins of secondary 
and tertiary tint—although they highly approved the daffodil, 
did not altogether despise the violet, nor quite taboo the rose— 
mostly shunned flowers of indefinite form, and of positive colour, 
and sat up all night worshipping lilies! Truly the last generation 
saw the apotheosis of the lily, the columbine, and the Canterbury 
bell, and all other flowers of undefined shape and pale complexion. 
In March, when the bright petals of the camellia commence to 
drop, making a splash of red on the ground below the shrubs, the 
conservatory at Chiswick begins to think of putting on its summer 
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