AN AMERICAN KEW. 257 



they may have other uses, but if they had been made for pure beauty 

 it would be use enough. They must have been of great sesthetic value 

 to artists, especially to architects, decorators, and chasers of metals. The 

 mediseval illuminatorscertainly made capital out of them ; reminisceuces 

 of their shapes render lovely the ornaruent of innumerable missals. As 

 for the color, green seems to admit of more gradations than auy other 

 hue, as any one who has observed the woods in spring knows ; and of 

 all others it is the most grateful and wholesome to the eye. With the 

 rough grays and browns of the rocks it makes enchanting combinations. 

 But, really, this moist fern atmosphere is too languorous and enervating ; 

 we must escape into the outer world, — which, for a time, will appear 

 straugely red, like that which astronomers suppose to be characteristic 

 of the planet Mars. 



It would take too long, even in imagination, to go through all Kew 

 Gardens at this leisurely rate. Only, for splendor of color and volup- 

 tuousness of perfume, there is nothing comparable to the Conservatory, 

 in which roses and all other bright-hued flowers are grouped and massed 

 in sumptuous magnificence.. The rose is England's flower : she has 

 taken possession of it, as of so many other good things, without troub- 

 ling herself to prove any title to it; and there is nothing in her history 

 or character to make her worthy of it. One can understand why Persia 

 should claim the rose ; and in our own Southern States the houses are 

 smothered with roses, and the air that flows from them is sweeter than 

 incense. I have, it is true, gathered English roses in December ; and 

 the houses of York and Lancaster wore roses which, red and white 

 alike, were steeped in blood. But, if anything could justify England 

 in her appropriation of the rose, it would be this rose-house at Kew, 

 where criticism becomes impossible, and one can only gaze, and inhale, 

 and love. Pink, white, crimson, golden, they cluster and triumph 

 there : with their exquisite petals Venus and Mars might strew a couch 

 worthy of an Olympian marriage. If love, romance, and beauty died 

 out of human nature, this flower would bring them back ; and so long 

 as it stays with us, we may be sure that life will not lose the glory that 

 entitles it to iramortality. 



While meditating these matters, we might take a turn in the wood- 

 house, — by which I mean the building containing specimens, polished 

 and in the rough, of all kinds of woods from all parts of the world. 

 Their gamut of color embraces all the hues of the rainbow, and many 

 others ; and there are specimens of wood-mosaics that are inferior in 

 beauty only to agate and marble. Or we may wander through the 

 corridors and halls of the museum, which exhibits every sort of manu- 

 facture into which vegetable substances enter, including numberless 

 fabrics of Indian or savage origin. One is surprised, after examining 

 these things, that our little earth should be large enough to contain 

 anything that is not more or less botanical. 



But I set out to write about an American Kew, and my introductory 

 reflections are monopolizing the entire space at my command. The 

 truth is, of course,'that no American Kew exists; but it is pertinent, 

 at the present time, to inquire whether there is any reason why it should 

 not. America, I believe, is the only country of consequence that does 

 Yol. XLVIL— 17 



