hat London has but just been
quitted.

Green foliage around, green grass beneath, a pleasant sensation--not
silence, but absence of jarring sound--blue sky overhead, streaks and
patches of sunshine where the branches admit the rays, wide, cool
shadows, and clear, sweet atmosphere. High in a lime tree, hidden from
view by the leaves, a chiffchaff sings continually, and from the
distance comes the softer note of a thrush. On the close-mown grass a
hedge-sparrow is searching about within a few yards, and idle insects
float to and fro, visible against the background of a dark yew
tree--they could not be seen in the glare of the sunshine. The peace of
green things reigns.

It is not necessary to go farther in; this spot at the very entrance is
equally calm and still, for there is no margin of partial
disturbance--repose begins at the edge. Perhaps it is best to be at once
content, and to move no farther; to remain, like the lime tree, in one
spot, with the sunshine and the sky, to close the eyes and listen to
the thrush. Something, however, urges exploration.

The majority of visitors naturally follow the path, and go round into
the general expanse; but I will turn from here sharply to the right, and
crossing the sward there is, after a few steps only, another enclosing
wall. Within this enclosure, called the Herbaceous Ground, heedlessly
passed and perhaps never heard of by the thousands who go to see the
Palm Houses, lies to me the real and truest interest of Kew. For here is
a living dictionary of English wild flowers.

The meadow and the cornfield, the river, the mountain and the woodland,
the seashore, the very waste place by the roadside, each has sent its
peculiar representatives, and glancing for the moment, at large, over
the beds, noting their number and extent, remembering that the specimens
are not in the mass but individual, the first conclusion is that our own
country is the true Flowery Land.

But the immediate value of this wonderful garden is in the clue it gives
to the most ignorant, enabling any one, no matter how unlearned, to
identify the flower that delighted him or her, it may be, years ago, in
faraway field or copse. Walking up and down the green paths between the
beds, you are sure to come upon it presently, with its scientific name
duly attached and its natural order labelled at the end of the patch.

Had I only known of this place in former days, how gladly I would have
walked the hundred mi