6o 



ROYAL GARDENS 



years, and it still remains a memorial of the Stuart Queen 

 who loved the place so well, and a beautiful and unique 

 feature of the old Privy Garden on the banks of the Thames. 

 The lovely garden itself owes most of its wonderful charm to 

 the fortunate preservation of its exquisite and old-fashioned 

 formality. Here Elizabeth was daily wont to walk, and of it 

 the great poet of her reign might well have been thinking 

 when he sang — 



" It was a chosen plot of fertile land 

 Beside the wide waves set, like little nest, 

 As if it had by Nature's cunning hand 

 Been choicely picked out from all the rest, 

 And laid forth for example of the best : 

 No daintie flower or herb that grows on ground, 

 No arborett with painted blossoms drest 

 And smelling sweet, but there it might be found 

 To bud out fair and throw her sweet smells all around." 



Lying in front of the seventeenth-century orangery, the 

 alleys, pleasances and pond gardens of Henry VHL, not 

 unlike what they must have been nearly four hundred years 

 ago, still exist to give untold delight to modern eyes. The 

 Broad Walk of 1700 has still its splendid flower borders, 

 though now they are filled with latest and most brilliant 

 achievements of horticultural art. The radiating yews in 

 the Fountain Garden have been little altered except by time ; 

 and Charles's " sweet rows of limes " and William's magni- 

 ficent terraces still remain to impress every beholder with 

 their well-ordered grace and stately beauty. 



