Exit the loud tongue of the Duchess of Marlborough; Abigail Hill, now Mrs. Masham, has a good rejoicing chat with her mistress; and for the rest of Queen Anne's reign, Kensington Palace would seem to have been as dull and as quiet as the more advanced years of her Majesty could desire. Whigs and Tories, it is true, contended in it for possession of her favour; and the conflict is supposed to have embittered her last moments, which here took place; yet, at all events, there was no Duchess of Marlborough, and no noise. And the outside was as dull as the in. Anne enlarged the Gardens, but she did not improve the style of gardening. Addison, in a paper of the "Spectator," written during the last year but one of her reign, catching at the least glimpse of a variation, speaks with rapture of the conversion of a disused gravel-pit, which had been left remaining, into a cultivated dell; but it would seem as if this exploit on the part of the gardeners was rather in the hope of making the best of what they considered a bad thing, than intended as an advance towards something better; for they laid out the Queen's additional acres in the same formal style as King William's. Long, straight gravel-walks, and clipped hedges, prevailed throughout, undiversified with the present mixture of freer growing wood. An alcove or two, still existing, were added; and Anne, exerted herself so far as to build a long kind of out-house, which still remains and which she intended, it is said, for the balls and suppers which certainly took place in it; though we suspect, from the narrow ness of its construction, it never was designed for anything but what it is, a green-house. These most probably constituted all those elegancies of art," with which a writer of the time gives her credit for improving the Gardens. Such, at any rate, was the case in the more public portions of them; and if the private ones enjoyed any others, we may guess what they were, from Pope's banter of the horticultural fashions of the day, in a paper which he contributed to the "Guardian," the year after the appearance of that of Addison's in the " Spectator." The following is a taste of them. The poet is giving a catalogue of plants that were to be disposed of by auction: "Adam and Eve in yew; Adam a little shattered by the fall of the Tree of Know ledge in the great storm; Eve and the Serpent very flourishing. "St. George, in box; his arm scarce long enough, but will be in a condition to stick the Dragon, by next April. "An old Maid of Honour, in wormwood. "A topping Ben Jonson, in laurel. "A quick-set hog, shot up into a porcupine, by its being forgot a week in rainy weather." The "old Maid of Honour, in wormwood" might have told the little satirist, that he was an old bachelor in stinging-nettle. Maids of Honour, we take it, have never been very famous for growing old. Their maiden state has generally passed into that of Ladies of the Bed-chamber, whether royal or otherwise. They were by no means in their sprightliest condition during the reign |