roon, through crimson, up to white;
sweet-scented heliotrope, and richly shaded primroses, that make the
tenants of the woods look pale with envy. A pity it seems to disturb the
harmony of colour, so perfect a parterre does it form, with the
back-ground of shrubs that stand in such rich clusters behind them, all
waiting to be transplanted to new homes. In the very midst of them rises
a mysterious-looking little ark of canvass, resting from its weekly
labour of perambulating the streets and suburbs through which it has been
borne, sedan fashion, by the pair of unclassical-looking hobbledehoys
that own the gay treasures it is formed to shelter, and whose lips can
manage to send forth a string of nomenclature that may fairly shake the
nerves of any modest purchaser. Sweet simple-looking little floral gems,
they will recommend to notice as Gilea rosea adorata, Clarkia fimbricata,
Coreopsis nigra, speciosa, Colinsea rubra, all hardy annuals; and with
the utmost nonchalance describe some trembling little creeper as
Tropoelum Campatica Fuchsia Carolinae, Campanula Campatica, and Lobelia
ramosa, all safely meant, we presume, to conceal the relationship of the
owners to the familiar tenants of the cottage border. A novice must
seize in desperation upon some one that, shorn of its _ishii_ or _osum_,
may chance to be remembered, lest his fate should resemble that of the
fair lady, who once professed to own in her garden the "aurora borealis"
and "delirium tremens."

Among the scientific nurseries that clothe almost every outskirt of the
city, may perhaps be found grander exotics, or more luxuriant varieties
of floral beauty; but these fragments of botanic skill and lore are fair
specimens of the inheritance bequeathed to the sons of the soil by those
great master-minds whose gardens once drew Evelyn from the metropolis
upon a visit to this then pre-eminent seat of wealth and magnificence.
"My Lord's Gardens," that skirted the water-side, whose quadrangle
contained a bowling-green, a wilderness, and garden, with walks of forty
feet in breadth surrounding them, have passed away, a fragment of the
wilderness alone remains to mark the site of the glorious displays of
wealth and fashion once paraded among them; but the name, associated with
the memory of the times, is a star of the first magnitude, in the galaxy
of the city's firmament of great men.

Sir Thomas Browne, the philosopher, the physician, the naturalist, the
antiquaria