brook
at Ryskins, near Colnbrook; and Lord Strafford, thinking that it was
done from poverty or economy asked him to own fairly how little more it
would have cost him to have made it straight. In these days no possessor
of a park or garden has the water on his grounds either straight or
square if he can make it resemble the Thames as described by Wordsworth:

The river wanders at its own sweet will.

Horace Walpole in his lively and pleasant little work on Modern
Gardening almost anticipates this thought. In commending Kent's style of
landscape-gardening he observes: "_The gentle stream was taught to
serpentize at its pleasure."_

[036] This Palm-house, "the glory of the gardens," occupies an area of
362 ft. in length; the centre is an hundred ft. in width and 66 ft. in
height.

It must charm a Native of the East on a visit to our country, to behold
such carefully cultured specimens, in a great glass-case in England, of
the trees called by Linnaeus "the Princes of the vegetable kingdom," and
which grow so wildly and in such abundance in every corner of Hindustan.
In this conservatory also are the banana and plantain. The people of
England are in these days acquainted, by touch and sight, with almost
all the trees that grow in the several quarters of the world. Our
artists can now take sketches of foreign plants without crossing the
seas. An allusion to the Palm tree recals some criticisms on
Shakespeare's botanical knowledge.

"Look here," says _Rosalind_, "what I found on a palm tree." "A palm
tree in the forest of Arden," remarks Steevens, "is as much out of place
as a lioness in the subsequent scene." Collier tries to get rid of the
difficulty by suggesting that Shakespeare may have written _plane tree_.
"Both the remark and the suggestion," observes Miss Baker, "might have
been spared if those gentlemen had been aware that in the counties
bordering on the Forest of Arden, the name of an exotic tree is
transferred to an indigenous one." The _salix caprea_, or goat-willow,
is popularly known as the "palm" in Northamptonshire, no doubt from
having been used for the decoration of churches on Palm Sunday--its
graceful yellow blossoms, appearing at a time when few other trees have
put forth a leaf, having won for it that distinction. Clare so calls
it:--

"Ye leaning palms, that seem to look
Pleased o'er your image in the brook."

That Shakespeare included the willow in his forest scenery is certain,