282 
THE ROYAL GARDENS AT KEW. 
THE EOYAL BOTANIC GARDENS AT KEW. 
A VISIT to this national establishment im- 
presses us witii a notion of liberal and paternal 
government, and proves that under good 
management the mtellectual poor of a country 
may be provided with the same enjoyment as 
the rich provide for themselves. The con- 
version of this noble place from a bear-garden 
to a comparative paradise, has been the work 
of ten or eleven years ; it was only in 1837 
and 1838 that the original gai'den newspaper 
denounced it as a filthy, dirty, neglected con- 
cern, a disgrace to] the country and the ma- 
nagement, and asserted that the plants were in 
a shamefully bad state of decline, — charges 
that were indignantly repelled, but, never- 
theless, proved to be perfectly true in detail, 
as well as general substance. It was stated 
ill the same paper, that there were but two 
modes of dealing with the affair — either the 
establishment should be broken up, the plants 
distributed, and all the cost saved, or a suf- 
ficient grant should be made to keep it as 
a National Botanical Garden, in the highest 
order, and open to the public, with the plants 
properly labelled, and a sufficient number of 
attendants to prevent depredation. Since 
all this was said and written, a commission 
of inquiry confirmed the truth of the charges, 
and recommended the adoption of the im- 
provements. Sir W. J. Hooker superseded 
the former curator, and has been gradually 
carrying out the improvements necessary to 
complete the Royal Gardens, Kew ; and in a 
former part in this book may be seen an 
article, showing the spirit of the changes, the 
way in which they were met, the results which 
followed, and a visit, after ten years' absence, 
by the party who was first to denounce the 
former management and suggest the improve- 
ment. We have just made a visit,, our first 
since the plants were placed in the Palm- 
house, and we must say that, to any one who 
loves a garden, or admires plants, there is 
nothing to come near that splendid conser- 
vatory. The whole building, so far as super- 
ficial observation goes, is faultless ; but no 
public building in this country can be so : 
there is among our best architects a great lack 
of that common sense which pervades less 
pretending classes, and it is scarcely possible 
to find any thing built within the last half 
century, in which the least attention has been 
paid to a proper elevation. The noble build- 
ing at Kew is of course no exception. The 
system for the accommodation of the plants 
is excellent, but we are quite sure it was un- 
necessary to provide a place for the Thames ; 
yet as four or five feet of room was wanted 
beneath the floor for the hot-water pipes, the 
architect could not provide this by having the 
floor so much higher, but he must go down to 
the teiTitories of old Father Thames, who no 
sooner found them disturbed than he took 
possession, and though turned out very fre- 
quently, still finds his way back, to be turned 
out again. To be serious, the excavation 
beneath the floor is too low, and the water 
will come in, and frequent pumping is neces- 
sary to get rid of it. This, if true, is a 
great pity, because the place seems otherwise 
unexceptionable, with a central roof 66 feet 
high, covering a space of 138 feet by 100, and 
two wings 112 feet by 50 ; it is impossible to 
overrate the general effect now that the plants 
are in the house. A tropical forest would 
give some of the effect, but as the variety of 
the plants far exceeds anything that can be 
found in one locality, it is far more interesting 
than any other spot on the globe can be. In 
the central department, as it may be called, is 
a gallery, thirty feet from the ground, ap- 
proached by means of a spiral staircase, and the 
effect is grand. The noble palms, and other 
tropical plants from various parts of the world, 
are rapidly recovering the desirable state of 
health which they have not enjoyed, and 
never could have enjoyed, in the wretchedly 
crowded houses which they inhabited before 
the conservatory was built ; but there must 
be a complete new growth before the damaged 
trees can be got rid of. Nobody can find 
reasonable fault with its construction, nor the 
manner in which the plants are being placed ; 
but we regret the intrusion of water, for 
water we could see ; and we were informed 
that, by some unaccountable oversight, the 
excavation was below the level of the Thames, 
and required them to be always pumping. 
This, we suspect, was figurative, the " always " 
meaning only "sometimes." Certain it is 
that the public will not discover much incon- 
venience, and the ornamental water appeared 
to us to be low enough to bear a good deal of 
filling up. The plants in the cactus house are 
grand beyond description ; a specimen of 
Melocactus, that weighs upwards of eight 
hundredweight, is called by the newspapers 
" The Monster Cactus." Some of the other 
specimens are enormous, though not quite so 
bulky; but the endless variety and the extra- 
ordinary ibrms present a collection of natural 
curiosities to be Ibund nowhere else. The or- 
chideous house contains just now one specimen 
of Oncidium, the most beautiful we have seen 
— the spike strong, the flowers very close 
and brilliant, and the plant altogether inter- 
esting ; it is marked Oncidium sp. and has 
not yet had its name. Of course there are 
thousands of plants, that are desirable to 
plant lovers, but one of the best things we 
