more
favourable soil and purer air. This, at length, he found at
Brompton. Here he procured a spacious territory, in which he had the
pleasure of seeing his wishes gratified to the utmost extent of
reasonable expectation. Here he continued to his death;"

having, I may add, for many years previously, devoted himself entirely to
botanical pursuits.

To support the slow sale of 'The Flora Londinensis,' Mr. Curtis, about
1787, started 'The Botanical Magazine,' which became one of the popular
periodicals of the day, and Dr. Smith's and Mr. Sowerby's 'English
Botany' was modelled after it.

What Mr. Curtis, as an individual, commenced, the Horticultural Society
are endeavouring, as a body, to effect.

Immediately past the Hospital for Consumption is Fowlis Terrace, a row of
newly-built houses, running from the road.

At the corner of Church Street (on the opposite side of the road) is an
enclosure used as the burial-ground of the Westminster Congregation of
the Jews. There is an inscription in Hebrew characters over the
entrance, above which is an English inscription with the date of the
erection of the building according to the Jewish computation A.M. 5576,
or 1816 A.D. Beside it is the milestone denoting that it is 1.5 mile
from London.

The QUEEN'S ELM TURNPIKE, pulled down in 1848, was situated here, and
took its name from the tradition that Queen Elizabeth, when walking out,
attended by Lord Burleigh, {87a} being overtaken by a heavy shower of
rain, found shelter here under an elm-tree. After the rain was over, the
queen said, "Let this henceforward be called The Queen's Tree." The
tradition is strongly supported by the parish records of Chelsea, as
mention is made in 1586 (the 28th of Elizabeth, and probably the year of
the occurrence), of a tree situated about this spot, "at the end of the
Duke's Walk," {87b} as "The Queen's Tree," around which an arbour was
built, or, in other words, nine young elm-trees were planted, by one
Bostocke, at the charge of the parish. The first mention of "The Queen's
_Elm_," occurs in 1687, ninety-nine years after her Majesty had sheltered
beneath the tree around which "an arbour was built," when the surveyors
of the highway were amerced in the sum of five pounds, "for not
sufficiently mending the highway from the Queen Elm to the bridge, and
from the Elm to Church Lane." In a plan of Chelsea, from a survey made
in 1664 by James Hamilton, and continued to