December  5,  1901. 
JOURNAL  OF  HORTICULTURE  AND  COTTAGE  GARDENER. 
507 
"will  be  more  free  flowering,  longer-lived,  and  generally  more 
sat  sfactory  than  in  heat.  Because  a  plant  is  an  Orchid  from 
^tropical  latitudes  it  does  not  follow  that  a  stewing  heat  is  neces¬ 
sary  for  it. — H.  R.  R. 
John  Evelyn  and  London  “Smoak." 
The  Londoner  of  to-day  who  should  find  himself  set  down 
suddenly  in  the  city  of  Milton  and  Pepys  and  Evelyn,  would 
•certainly  discover  a  considerable  change  in  his  surroundings  ; 
■but  he  would  at  once  note  the  presence  of  one  familiar  fea- 
Paris  was  his  model,  Paris  which  was  so  much  more  sym¬ 
metrical  than  London,  so  much  more  civil,  so  much  more 
sanitary.  The  great  gardener’s  orderly  mind  revolted  at 
“  the  congestion  of  misshapen  and  extravagant  houses,  the 
narrow  and  incommodious  streets,  the  ill  and  uneasie  form  of 
paving,  the  troublesome  and  malicious  disposure  of  the 
spouts  and  gutters  overhead,”  and  at  “the  churches, 
dammed  up  with  pues,  every  three  or  four  of  the  inhabitants 
sitting  in  narrow  pounds  by  themselves.”  But  most  of  all  he 
deplored  in  language  which  may  be  commended  to  the  Smoke 
Abatement  League,  “  the  hellish  and  dismal  clowd  of  seacoal 
which  is  perpettually  imminent  over  this  august  and  opulent 
city,”  making  it  “  rather  resemble  the  suburbs  of  hell  than  an 
ture.  Two  hundred  and  fifty  years  ago  London  was  smaller, 
more  picturesque,  and  in  a  sense,  perhaps,  more  splendid 
than  it  is  now,  but  it  was  not  less  grimy  ;  and  the  smoke  of 
the  city  was  as  vexatious  a  problem  then  as  it  is  at  the 
present  hour. 
The  question  is  laid  before  us  with  much  vigour  and  con¬ 
viction  by  John  Evelyn  in  the  pamphlet  called  “  Fumifu- 
gium,”  which  was  published  by  the  King’s  command  in  1661, 
five  years  before  the  Great  Eire  swept  the  narrow  insanitary 
streets,  accomplishing  its  cleansing  work  with  awful  com¬ 
pleteness.  Evelyn  was  not  a  true  lover  of  London.  He 
fully  admits  the  grandeur  of  its  situation,  but  he  never  justly 
appreciated  the  beauty  of  the  city  (in  which,  he  says,  he  had 
“  neither  habitation,  office,  or  being  ”)  which  won  from  no 
less  ardent  lover  of  solitude  than  himself  an  undying  garland. 
assembly  of  rational  creatures  and  the  imperiall  seat  of  our 
incomparable  monarch  ...  so  that  the  weary  traveller 
at  many  miles  distance  sooner  smells  than  sees  the  city  to 
which  he  repairs.  .  .  .  At  least,  let  the  continual  sojourn 
of  our  illustrious  Charles,  wTho  is  the  very  breath  of  our 
nostrils,  in  whose  health  all  our  happiness  consists,  be  pre¬ 
cious  in  our  eyes,  and  make  our  noble  patriots  now 
assembled  in  Parliament  consult  for  the  speedy  removal  of 
this  universal  grievance.” 
The  illustrious  Charles,  whose  triumphant  return  to  his 
capital  Evelyn  had  lately  witnessed — “  I  stood  in  the 
Strand,”  he  says,  “  and  saw  it,  and  bless’d  God  ” — interested 
himself  very  warmly  in  the  subject  of  Evelyn’s  tract. 
During  a  sailing  match  from  Greenwich  to  Gravesend  and 
back  between  two  yachts  belonging  to  the  King  and  the 
