Kew Gardens contain what seems the completest botanical collection in the world, handicapped as it is by a climate at the antipodes of Eden, and by a soil that owes less to Nature than to patient art. Before being given up to public pleasure and instruction, this demesne was a royal country seat, specially favoured by George III. That homely King had two houses here and began to build a more pretentious palace, a design cut short by his infirmities, but for which Kew might have usurped the place

The most conspicuous feature of Kew is its Pagoda, from many points seen towering over the well-wooded flat watered by a winding reach of the Thames. Such an outlandish structure bears up the odd name in giving a suggestion of China, not contradicted by the elaborate cultivation around, where all seems market-garden that is not park, buildings, groves or flower-beds. Yet the name, of old written as Kaihough , Kaiho , Kayhoo , and in other quaint forms—for which quay of the howe or hough has been

The chief memories of Kew are associated with its royal master who, by his doings here, earned the nickname of “Farmer George,” in his unpopular days also belittled as the “Buttonmaker,” a sneer at his turning-lathe, and the taste for other mechanical pursuits which he shared with Louis XVI. The “Squire of Kew” is a title that would have suited him better; and he might have lived more happily and usefully had his station been no higher than that which he here affected. When he could get away fro

Gardens appear to be an old story in this neighbourhood. The Monastery of Sheen, that stood on the flats somewhere about the present Observatory, was equipped with its orchard, vineyard, and other enclosures, through which the holy fathers, like those of Melrose, would be able to make “good kail, on Fridays when they fasted”; and let us trust that suppressed spite never drove them, as in a certain Spanish cloister, to keep a brother’s pet flowers “close-nipped on the sly.” Kew’s connection with

Kew itself does not stand in the forefront of its own story, for long remaining little more than an obscure river-side hamlet, half a dozen miles out of London, connected by a ferry with Brentford, and with its quaint little neighbour Strand-on-the-Green, which might have risen to equal note had Gunnersbury or Chiswick taken a king’s fancy. It was not till the eighteenth century that Kew began to burgeon under royal favour; and for the first half of that century, Richmond lay basking on the sunn

Kew has grown out to run into Richmond by blocks of commonplace suburban houses, some of which boast to stand on a dozen feet of gravel. The quaint Georgian mansions have mostly sunk in relative importance; and the homely cottages that once neighboured them have gone, or are like to go, though some of them still do a trade in refreshments, notably in sixpenny and ninepenny teas served to holiday parties. One side of the Green, turning from the Bridge to the main gate, is a row of houses and gard