f. But when Mr. Smith, a Hertfordshire gentleman, became
landlord by purchase, he came to live on his little kingdom, and to
rule as a benevolent autocrat. Just such a rule was needed, for
matters demanded a firm hand. There was some resistance, some kicking,
some difference of opinion between himself and his people; but the
strong will and the firm hand conquered in the end and a better time
dawned for Scilly. The squire sent the boys off to sea and the girls
to service on the mainland; he made new roads, improved the quay, and
even enforced a system of compulsory education. He resided at Tresco
Abbey, where the few remains of the old monastic establishment added
picturesqueness to a modern manor-house, and where he brought the
gardens into very much the state in which we still find them. It was
his wish that their character should be maintained. Tresco, in its
special style, is indeed beautiful. "The Cape geranium, the common
fuchsia, the sweet-scented verbena, and various kinds of myrtles and
veronicas, are grown as hedges to protect the crops. Looking across
Crow Sound from St. Mary's, these hedges are one blaze of colour, and
the air is heavy with their perfume. The Abbey stands in a rocky
valley looking south. The grounds are laid out in a succession of
terraces, and from every nook and crevice rare specimens of cacti,
sedums, and mesembryanthemums with their orange and purple bloom
sprawl over the rocks and run riot among the borders. In the gardens
South American aloes throw up their flowering stalks heavy with
aromatic fragrance, 20 feet high, and giant dracaenas wave their
feathery heads in the balmy breeze. Exotic palms, the bamboo, the
sugar-cane, and the cotton plant grow in the open, and tropical mosses
and orchids hang from the trees. Outside on the breezy downs one may
drink in pure ozone from the Atlantic, and revel in an atmosphere
untainted by microbes or bacilli. Wild duck, woodcock, and plover,
resting in their migratory flight, crowd the marshes, ponds, and
lagoons, and the sea is alive with fish." Such was the Tresco that Mr.
Augustus Smith made his home; such it is still in the hands of Mr.
Dorrien-Smith. It is certain that when Mr. Smith died in 1872, and was
buried at St. Buryan, he left the islands in a far better condition
than that in which he had found them; and his memory fully deserves
the striking monument of unhewn granite that has been raised to his
honour in his island-home.

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