the opening of the doors, found sitting at the head of the table. She received first the homage of the Duke of Cumberland, who, I suppose, was not king of Hanover when he knelt to her; the Duke of Sussex rose to perform the same ceremony, but the Queen, with admirable grace, stood up, and preventing him from kneeling, kissed him on the forehead. The crowd was so great, the arrangements were so ill-made, that my brothers told me Here, on the 21st of April, 1843, died, at the age of seventy, Augustus Frederick, Duke of Sussex. Mr. T. Raikes, in his "Journal," says of him: "He was a stout, coarse-looking man, of a free habit, plethoric, and subject to asthma. He lived at Kensington Palace, and was married to Lady Cecilia Gore, who had been made Duchess of Inverness by the Whigs. He had married previously, in 1793, Lady Augusta Murray; but that He marriage had been dissolved on the plea of the duke not obtaining his father's consent. He was always on bad terms with George IV., and under the weak government of William IV. he took the Radical line, courted the Whigs, and got the rangership of a royal park." He was buried at Kensal Green. His royal highness was, perhaps, the most popular of the sons of George III. had a magnificent library at Kensington, including one of the finest collections of Bibles in the world, which was dispersed, soon after his death, under the hammer of the auctioneer. His widow, the Duchess of Inverness, was allowed to occupy his apartments until her death, in 1873. Under date of Sunday, 29th March, 1840, Mr. Raikes writes in his "Journal: "The Duke of Sussex claims violently refused. They then went to the Duke of Cambridge with the same request, to which he made less difficulty, saying, that he wished to promote harmony in the family, and as it could not prevent him from being the son of his father, if the Duke of Sussex consented, he should not object. Lord Melbourne then returned to the latter, saying that the Duke of Cambridge had agreed at once; upon which Sussex, finding that he should lose all the merit of the concession, went straight to the Queen, appeared in the Times newspaper: "As the fact is becoming a matter of general discussion, that in the event of the death of the King of Hanover, and of the Crown Prince, his son, the question of the title of Sir Augustus D'Este to the throne of that kingdom will create some controversy, the following letter from her royal highness (the Countess d'Ameland) to Sir S. J. Dillon, will not be uninteresting. It is dated so long since as December 16, 1811: My dear Sir, I wished to have answered your last letter, but having mislaid your first, I did not know how to direct to you. I am sure you must believe that I am delighted with your pamphlet; but I must confess I do not think you have stated the fact quite exactly when you say (page 25) "that the question is at rest between me and the Duke of Sussex, because the connection has not only been declared illegal by sentence of the Ecclesiastical Court, but has been dissolved by consent that I have agreed to abandon all claims to his name," &c. Now, my dear sir, had I believed the sentence of the Ecclesiastical Court to be anything but a stretch of power, my girl would not have been born. Lord Thurlow told me my marriage was good abroad-religion taught me it was good at home, and not one decree of any powerful enemy could make me believe otherwise, nor ever will. By refusing me a subsistence they forced me to take a name-not the Duke of Sussex's-but they have not made me believe that I had no right to his. My children and myself were to starve, or I was to obey; and I obeyed; but I am not convinced. Therefore, pray don't call this "an act of mutual consent," or say "the question is at rest." The moment my son wishes it, I am ready to declare that it was debt, imprisonment, arrestation, necessity (force like this, in short), which obliged me to seem to give up my claims, and not my conviction of their fallacy. When the banns were published in the most frequented church in London, and where all the town goes, is not that a permission asked? And why were they not forbid? I believe my marriage at Rome good; and I shall never feel "the question at rest" till this is acknowledged. Prince Augustus is now sent to Jersey, as Lieutenant D'Este, in the 7th Fusiliers. Before he went, he told his father he had no objection to go under any name they chose to make him take; but that he knew what he was, and the time, he trusted, would come when himself would see justice done to his mother and sister, and his own birth." George III. having made St. James's and Buckingham Palace the head-quarters of royalty and the court, henceforward Kensington became the occasional or permanent residence of some of the younger branches of the royal family. Kensington Palace, we need hardly add, is maintained at the cost of the nation; and, though no longer used actually as a royal residence, it is appropriated to the use of certain pensioned families, favoured by royalty, and a lady who is distantly connected with the highest court circles holds the envied and not very laborious post of housekeeper. It may safely be assumed, we think, that she is "at the top of her profession." The Right Hon. John Wilson Croker lived here for some time. The Duke and Duchess of Teck and the Marquis and Marchioness of Lorne have since occupied those apartments which formerly were inhabited by the distinguished personages mentioned above. CHAPTER XIII. KENSINGTON GARDENS. "Where Kensington, luxuriant in her bowers, Here, while the town in damps and darkness lies, "Military" Appearance of the Gardens, as laid out by Wise and Loudon-Addison's Comments on the Horticultural Improvements of his TimeThe Gardens as they appeared at the Beginning of the Last Century-Queen Anne's Banqueting House-Statue of Dr. Jenner-Bridgeman's Additions to the Gardens-The "Ha! ha!”—“ 'Capability" Brown-The Gardens first opened to the Public-A Foreigner's Opinion of Kensington Gardens-" Tommy Hill" and John Poole-Introduction of Rare Plants and Shrubs-Scotch Pines and other Trees-A Friendly Flash of Lightning-The Reservoir and Fountains-Tickell, and his Poem on Kensington Gardens-Chateaubriand-Introduction of Hooped Petticoats-The Broad Walk becomes a Fashionable Promenade-Eccentricities in Costume-The Childhood of Queen Victoria, and her Early Intercourse with her Future Subjects-A Critical Review of the Gardens. THE gardens attached to Kensington Palace, when | military, the consequence was that closely-cropped purchased by William III., did not exceed twenty- yews, and prim holly hedges, were taught, under six acres. They were immediately laid out ac- the auspices of Loudon and Wise, the royal garcording to the royal taste; and this being entirely deners, to imitate the lines, angles, bastions, scarps, Kensington Gardens.] STATUE OF DR. JENNER. 153 hoops, fly-caps, and fans,' songs by the court lyrists, &c." When the Court left Kensington, this building was converted into an orangery and greenhouse. and counter-scarps of regular fortifications. This room, and ball-room; and thither the queen was curious upper garden, we are told, was long "the conveyed in her chair from the western end of the admiration of every lover of that kind of horticul- | palace. Here were given full-dress fêtes à la tural embellishment," and, indeed, influenced the Watteau, with a profusion of 'brocaded robes, general taste of the age; for Le Nautre, or Le Notre, who was gardener to the Tuileries, and had been personally favoured by Louis XIV., in conjunction with the royal gardeners, was employed by most of the nobility, during the reign of William, in laying out their gardens and grounds. Addison, in No. 477 of the Spectator, thus speaks of the horticultural improvements of this period:-"I think there are as many kinds of gardening as of poetry: your makers of pastures and flower-gardens are epigrammatists and sonneteers in this art; contrivers of bowers and grottoes, treillages and cascades, are romantic writers; Wise and Loudon are our heroic poets; and if, as a critic, I may single out any passage of their works to commend, I shall take notice of that part in the upper garden at Kensington which was at first nothing but a gravel-pit. It must have been a fine genius for gardening that could have thought of forming such an unsightly hollow into so beautiful an area, and to have hit the eye with so uncommon and agreeable a scene as that which it is now wrought into." In 1691 these gardens are thus described: "They are not great, nor abounding with fine plants. The orange, lemon, myrtle, and what other trees they had there in summer, were all removed to London, or to Mr. Wise's greenhouse at Brompton Park, a little mile from there. But the walks and grass were very fine, and they were digging up a plot of four or five acres to enlarge their gardens." Queen Anne added some thirty acres more, which were laid out by her gardener, Wise. Bowack, in 1705, describes here "a noble collection of foreign plants, and fine neat greens, which makes it pleasant all the year. . . . Her Majesty has been pleased lately to plant near thirty acres more to the north, separated from the rest only by a stately greenhouse, not yet finished." It appears from this passage that, previous to the above date, Kensington Gardens did not extend further to the north than the conservatory, which, as stated in the previous chapter, was originally built for a banqueting-house, and was frequently used as such by Queen Anne. This banquetinghouse was completed in the year 1705, and is considered a fine specimen of brickwork. The south front has rusticated columns supporting a Doric pediment, and the ends have semi-circular "The interior, decorated with Corinthian columns," Mr. John Timbs tells us in his "Curiosities," "was fitted up as a drawing-room, music recesses. Just within the boundary of the gardens at the south-eastern corner, on slightly rising ground, is the Albert Memorial, which we have already described,* and not far distant is the statue of Dr. Jenner, the originator of vaccination. This statue, which is of bronze, represents the venerable doctor in a sitting posture. It is the work of William Calder Marshall, and was originally set up in Trafalgar Square in 1858, but was removed hither about four years afterwards. The eastern boundary of the gardens would seem to have been in Queen Anne's time nearly in the line of the broad walk which crosses them on the east side of the palace. The kitchen-gardens, which extended north of the palace, towards the gravel-pits, but are now occupied by some elegant villas and mansions, and the thirty acres lying north of the conservatory, added by Queen Anne to the pleasure-gardens, may have been the fifty-five acres "detached and severed from the park, lying in the north-west corner thereof," granted in the reign of Charles II. to Hamilton, the Ranger of Hyde Park, and Birch, the auditor of excise, "to be walled and planted with 'pippins and redstreaks,' on condition of their furnishing apples or cider for the king's use." This portion of the garden is thus mentioned in Tickell's poem :"That hollow space, where now, in living rows, Line above line, the yew's sad verdure grows, Was, ere the planter's hand its beauty gave, A common pit, a rude unfashion'd cave. The landscape, now so sweet, we well may praise; But far, far sweeter, in its ancient daysFar sweeter was it when its peopled ground With fairy domes and dazzling towers was crown'd. Where, in the midst, those verdant pillars spring, Rose the proud palace of the Elfin king; For every hedge of vegetable green, In happier years, a crowded street was seen; Nor all those leaves that now the prospect grace Could match the numbers of its pigmy race." At the end of the avenue leading from the south part of the palace to the wall on the Kensington Road is an alcove built by Queen Anne's orders; so that the palace, in her reign, seems to have stood in the midst of fruit and pleasure gardens, with pleasant alcoves on the west and south, and * See p. 38, ante. the stately banqueting-house on the east, the whole rural to make a home for the nightingale, whose confined between the Kensington and Uxbridge voice is often heard in the summer nights, espeRoads on the north and south, with Palace Green cially in the part nearest to Kensington Gore. on the west, the line of demarcation on the east "Here England's daughter, darling of the land, being the broad walk before the east front of the Sometimes, surrounded with her virgin band, palace. Gleams through the shades. She, towering o'er the rest, Stands fairest of the fairer kind confest; Form'd to gain hearts that Brunswick's cause denied. And charm a people to her father's side. Bridgeman, who succeeded Wise as the fashionable designer of gardens, was employed by Queen Caroline, consort of George II., to plant and lay out, on a larger scale than had hitherto been attempted, the ground which had been added to the gardens by encroaching upon Hyde Park. Bridgeman's idea of the picturesque led him to abandon "verdant sculpture," and he succeeded in effecting a complete revolution in the formal and square precision of the foregoing age, although he adhered in parts to the formal Dutch style of straight walks and clipped hedges. A plan of the gardens, published in 1762, shows on the north-east side a low wall and fosse, reaching from the Uxbridge Road to the Serpentine, and effectually shutting in the gardens. Across the park, to the east of Queen Anne's Gardens, immediately in front of the palace, a reservoir was formed with the "round pond; thence, as from a centre, long vistas or avenues were carried through the wood that encircled the water-one as far as the head of the Serpentine; another to the wall and fosse above mentioned, affording a view of the park; a third avenue led to a mount on the south-east side, which was raised with the soil dug in the formation of the adjoining canal, and planted with evergreens by Queen Anne. This mount, which has since been levelled again, or, at all events, considerably reduced, had on the top a revolving "prospect house." There was also in the gardens a "hermitage:" a print of it is to be seen in the British Museum. The low wall and fosse was introduced by Bridgeman as a substitute for a high wall, which would shut out the view of the broad expanse of park as seen from the palace and gardens; and it was deemed such a novelty that it obtained the name of a "Ha! ha!" derived from the exclamation of surprise involuntarily uttered by disappointed pedestrians. At each angle of this wall and fosse, however, semicircular projections were formed, which were termed bastions, and in this particular the arrangement accorded with the prevailing military taste. Bridgeman's plan of gardening, however, embraced the beauties of flowers and lawns, together with a wilderness and open groves; but the principal embellishments were entrusted to Mr. Kent, and subsequently carried out by a gentleman well known by the familiar appellation of "Capability" Brown. The gardens, it may be added, are still sufficiently "Long have these groves to royal guests been known, A prince of Albion's lineage graced the wood, On King William taking up his abode in the palace, the neighbouring town of Kensington and the outskirts of Hyde Park became the abode of fashion and of the hangers-on at the Court, whilst the gardens themselves became the scene of a plot for assassinating William, and replacing James II. on the throne. The large gardens laid out by Queen Caroline were opened to the public on Saturdays, when the King and Court went to Richmond, and on these occasions all visitors were required to appear in full dress. When the Court ceased to reside here, the gardens were thrown open in the spring and summer; they, nevertheless, long continued to retain much of their stately seclusion. The gardens are mentioned in the following terms by the poet Crabbe, in his "Diary: "—"Drove to Kensington Gardens: . . . effect new and striking. Kensington Gardens have a very peculiar effect; not exhilarating, I think, yet alive [lively] and pleasant." It seems, however, that the public had not always access to this pleasant place; for, in the "Historical Recollections of Hyde Park," by Thomas Smith, we find a notice of one Sarah Gray having had granted her a pension of £18 a year, as a compensation for the loss of her husband, who was accidentally shot by one of the keepers while hunting a fox in Kensington Gardens." According to Sir Richard Phillips, in "Modern London," published in 1804, the gardens were open to the public at that time only from spring to autumn; and, curiously enough, servants in livery were excluded, as also were dogs. Thirty years later the gardens are described as being open "all the year round, to all respectably-dressed persons, from sunrise till sunset." About that time, when it happened that the hour for closing the gates was eight o'clock, the following lines, purporting to have been written "by a young lady aged nineteen," were discovered affixed to one of the seats : |