VISITS TO NURSERIES. 
75 
that that monarch was skilled in botanical science ; but he had 
acquired a taste for the gardens from the example of his mother; 
and his partiality for vegetables continued, though it took an 
agricultural, rather than a floricultural, direction. In such cases, 
however, “ the king’s name is a tower of strength of more real 
value, perhaps, than if he were deeply learned in them ; for per¬ 
sons of lofty station should be the patrons of men of science, and 
not the rivals, because, if subjects are required to worship the 
wisdom of a monarch, it tends far more to warp their judgments 
than when they have simply to be grateful to him for his kind¬ 
ness. Other patrons of science were attracted by the royal pre¬ 
sence ; and foremost among these stood Sir Joseph Banks, having 
no pretensions to profound knowledge himself, but excellent tact 
in finding out and great liberality iu rewarding those who had. 
To the discernment and liberality of Sir Joseph, we owe the 
Bauers, the finest botanical anatomists and delineators that ever 
this country possessed, and also Dr. Robert Brown, beyond all 
measure our first physiological botanist; and if minor men—men 
not fit to hold a candle to these, or endure its light—shall 
dare to menace the existence of this grand living monument of 
Sir Joseph’s eminent services, they ought to be stripped of their 
supplemental letters, and all their other extraneous integuments, 
and have their naked bodies, standing in their own strength and 
merits as mere men, birched with the Daoun setan, or “ Devil’s 
leaf,” until they tingle again at every pore. 
Until the general hostility in which the world was engaged 
withdrew attention from such matters, Cook and all his successors 
brought a rich store of plants from^every land and every isle of the 
ocean, and Kew Gardens were the grand receptacle ; and its col¬ 
lection is still without a rival in the country, though haply its 
merits have been less loudly trumpeted forth than those of some 
inferior places. Mr. Aiton, jun., became principal horticulturist 
to the king upon the death of his father in 1793 ; and though the 
times in which the lot of his labours has been cast have been less 
auspicious than those of his father, and his attention has been 
greatly distracted by the extensive works done at Windsor and 
the other royal gardens and parks, of which Mr. Aiton had been 
made director by George IV.; yet no gardens can be in finer order 
than those of Kew are at the present time, and no man in office 
can be more attentive—courteous indeed—to visitors of all ranks, 
