might he worn on the fair brow or bosom of Queen Victoria with a nobler
grace than the costliest or most elaborate production of the goldsmith
or the milliner.

The majority of mankind, in the most active spheres of life, have
moments in which they sigh for rural retirement, and seldom dream of
such a retreat without making a garden the leading charm of it. Sir
Henry Wotton says that Lord Bacon's garden was one of the best that he
had seen either at home or abroad. Evelyn, the author of "Sylva, or a
Discourse of Forest Trees," dwells with fond admiration, and a pleasing
egotism, on the charms of his own beautiful and highly cultivated estate
at Wooton in the county of Surrey. He tells us that the house is large
and ancient and is "sweetly environed with delicious streams and
venerable woods." "I will say nothing," he continues, "of the air,
because the pre-eminence is universally given to Surrey, the soil being
dry and sandy; but I should speak much of the gardens, fountains and
groves that adorn it, were they not generally known to be amongst the
most natural, and (till this later and universal luxury of the whole
nation, since abounding in such expenses) the most magnificent that
England afforded, and which indeed gave one of the first examples to
that elegancy, since so much in vogue and followed, for the managing of
their waters and other elegancies of that nature." Before he came into
the possession of his paternal estate he resided at _Say's Court_, near
Deptford, an estate which he possessed by purchase, and where he had a
superb holly hedge four hundred feet long, nine feet high and five feet
broad. Of this hedge, he was particularly proud, and he exultantly asks,
"Is there under heaven a more glorious and refreshing object of the
kind?" When the Czar of Muscovy visited England in 1698 to instruct
himself in the art of ship-building, he had the use of Evelyn's house
and garden, at _Say's Court_, and while there did so much damage to the