Page:Cole, Henry - A hand-book to Hampton Court.djvu/102

96 military band pealing down the aisles of lime trees, and if your heart is not grateful to God for the wonderful union of glories here, you may make up your mind that you are a miserable, irreligious wretch, blind, deaf, and soulless.

Do not neglect to look at the chubby gold and silver fish in the basin where the fountain is playing. They are marvellously fat, and you will enjoy the fun of their greedy and cunning contentions for a few crumbs, if you are able to supply them; they swim for their fee the instant any stranger approaches.

we are inclined to think, have remained essentially the same since the time of Charles II. Their great ornament, perpetual all the year round, is the yew and laurel trees, which we think must be the "famous dwarfs," planted in the reign of Charles II. If such be the case, the position of these trees would show that the original palace did not extend farther eastward than it does at present. An old print of the time of Queen Anne exhibits upwards of twelve fountains playing before the eastern front; and as it is known that Charles II., who sought to obtain the assistance of Le Notre and Perault, the most celebrated gardeners at Versailles (which abounds in fountains) for Hampton Court, and failing to get it, appointed one Mr. Rose as his garden decorator, who had also studied at Versailles, we are fully entitled to conclude, in the absence of better evidence, that these fountains were placed there by Charles II. There can be no doubt, from Evelyn's account of the gardens, in 1662, that the style of decoration, which in its main features still exists, was essentially based, not, as we have been told in several places, upon Dutch notions, but upon the taste qf Louis Quatorze at Versailles. To Loudon and Wise, gardeners to William and Mary, the present distribution of the gardens is attributed in all but the monstrosities of form into which the unhappy yews and olives were clipped by them, but which are now left free to take their own peculiar, solemn, and mystic shapes, which Nature designed. One Pluckenet, gardener to Queen Mary, received a salary as high as 200l. a year, so that the duties were considered important. Some early history of these gardens, as far as it is ascertained, is given among the historical notes (Appendix D).

Let us stroll down the cool and scented grove of lime trees towards the river, and pursue our path for half a mile along with the Thames on our right, clear, silvery, shining—and with a prospect before us free from the drawbacks which attach to the river scenery near Richmond, where at low tide the stream is robbed of many of its charms. Thanks to the locks at Teddington, where the tide ends (Tide End Town), the river here is always at a picturesque level. This terrace extends nearly as