KEW BRIDGE.
Tempting as the “Royal Gardens” appear from the river, the promise is more than fulfilled on closer inspection. Places devoted to the pursuit of science are apt, in their studious severity, to be somewhat repellent to the uninitiated; and even a botanic garden, beautiful as some of its contents must always be, is occasionally no exception to the rule. But this is not the case at Kew. There, indeed, work is not sacrificed to pleasure. Its arrangements are scientific and precise enough to satisfy the most exacting. Its museums and laboratories afford opportunity for the severest study; but yet, in many parts of the garden, nature is so happily blended with art, apparent freedom of growth and association with scientific order and exactness, that as we wander over its lawns, or linger beneath the shadow of its stately trees, we can abandon ourselves simply to the beauties of nature, and “consider the lilies of the field” without counting their stamens or their pistils. The glasshouses, open during certain hours of the day, are often bright with exotic flowers; in the great tank the huge lily from South American rivers opens its blossoms among pond-flowers from sunnier regions than our own. The palm-house enables the home-staying Briton to form some conception of the verdure of a tropical forest. For those who love the formal style of gardening, trim parterres bright with many colours, there is satisfaction on the terraces by the side of the ornamental water, while those who prefer a wilder growth need only wander away towards the outskirts of the garden. On the rockery, which, in its present form, is one of the later additions to the gardens, many an Alpine flower will be seen flourishing in the Valley of the Thames as vigorously as on the crags of the Pennine or Lepontine Alps; while in the new picture gallery—the gift of Miss North—the singular skill and enterprise of the donor enables us to wander among the floral beauties of every land, and to put a girdle of flowers around the earth in much less than forty minutes. But to see Kew Gardens in their glory we should visit them when the rhododendron and its kindred flowers are in bloom. The shrubbery of azaleas is bright with every shade of saffron, and is dappled tenderly with clusters of white and of pink. The great bushes of rhododendron are all aglow with colour, and down the long walk is a many-tinted vista of blossoming shrubs.
CAMBRIDGE COTTAGE, KEW.
Formerly, the pleasaunces at Kew abounded in the absurd anachronisms which, in the days of our great-grandfathers, were supposed to enhance the beauties of a garden—sham ruins, stucco temples, and the like. There was even a Merlin’s cave; perhaps, at times, a magician also was on view. These monstrosities have, happily, for the most part, crumbled away, or have been more promptly destroyed; fragments of them have gone to build the rockeries, and served thus some useful purpose in a district where stone is far to find. The Chinese pagoda almost alone survives, conspicuous owing to its height from many points in all the country round, and of this all that we can say is that it is a pagoda upon whose architectural merits we must leave the Chinese to pass a judgment—remarking, meanwhile, that it harms the landscape no more than a water-tower, and considerably less than a factory chimney.
Gliding along the river, past the enclosing wall of the palace, we are confronted on the opposite shore by the houses of Brentford. These we will leave for a moment to finish our say concerning Kew, whose handsome many-arched bridge of grey stone, not unlike that of Richmond, is now coming into view. This bridge was built about the year 1783, replacing an earlier structure. A short distance from it on the Surrey shore, abutting on to one side of the gardens, in the immediate vicinity of the royal palace, is the more ancient part of the village of Kew. Here is the Green, so pleasant a feature in many of these suburban townlets. On one side stands the church, with its little graveyard—the “Chapel of St. Anne,” and once a true Queen Anne structure, for the ground was granted by that sovereign, and the church completed in the year 1714. It has, however, undergone many alterations, especially about the year 1838, when it was enlarged at the expense of King William IV., and another “restoration” has lately been completed, during which a chancel has been appended, and the roof of the nave raised. At the same time a mortuary chapel was added, in which is laid the body of the late Duke of Cambridge. He died at Cambridge Cottage, an unpretending mansion looking on to the Green, which remained the property of his widow until her death in 1889. Other persons of note in their day rest in this little God’s acre. Aiton, the gardener; Bauer, the microscopist; Kirby, the architect; Meyer and Zoffany, the artists; and, greater far than they, Gainsborough, whom to name is enough, was, by his own desire, buried under a plain tomb in Kew Churchyard. Here also is buried Sir William Hooker, late director of Kew Gardens, to whose repute as a botanist must be added that of developing the resources of the institution, and by his influence obtaining from successive governments the means of founding a great national museum of botany. He was succeeded by his son, Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker, the present director, by whom the work thus inaugurated has been no less ably carried on.
