Lovers of horticulture will tolerate a little further information concerning the early use of hothouses. As soon as glass began to be employed in domestic architecture, the construction of warmed and glazed chambers, in which plants could be grown, was attempted. Writers of the first century A.D. mention them, and Seneca explains how the temperature might be kept up by hot water. This and other refinements of the Roman Empire passed into oblivion during the long decline of civilisation, but revived with the revival of the arts. In the sixteenth century William IV., Landgraf of Hesse, who is remembered, among other things, as a patron of the botanist Clusius, built himself a green-house, which could be taken down and put together again. A still more famous orangerie was that of Heidelberg, which served as an example to the kings and nobles of Europe.[39] Henri IV. built one at the Tuileries, and long afterwards Louis XIV. had one at Versailles. Madame de Sévigné describes the orangerie of Clagny as a palace of Armida, and the most enchanting novelty in the world. The pine-apple was brought over from Barbadoes in the seventeenth century, and Evelyn speaks of having tasted the first pine-apple grown in England at the table of Charles the Second. For two hundred years the hothouse yielded no greater dainty, but rapid transit has now made pine-apples so cheap that it is no longer worth while to raise them in England. Fagon, who was during many years first physician to Louis XIV., was a considerable botanist. He was born and died at the Jardin des Plantes, and here, on his retirement from practice, he built hothouses; it would be interesting to know what he grew in them. In the first half of the seventeenth century the younger Tradescant, who, like his father before him, was gardener to our Charles I., brought over from America the spider-wort, named Tradescantia after him,[40] the false acacia and the tulip-tree. The magnolias, or some of them, the Virginian creeper, and the scarlet Lobelia cardinalis were among the gifts received from North America about the same time. The dwarf Lobelia (L. Erinus) was not brought over from the Cape of Good Hope till 1752, and Lobelia splendens and fulgens (both from Mexico) not till the nineteenth century. One of the passion-flowers, which are all American, came over about this time; but Passiflora cærulea, the favourite ornament of the greenhouse, was only imported from Brazil in 1699. The evening primrose, the "convolvulus major and minor" (Ipomæa purpurea and Convolvulus tricolor), were other acquisitions from North America. From the second half of the seventeenth century dates the introduction of the garden nasturtium (Tropæolum majus) from Peru; T. minus from Mexico had been brought over nearly a hundred years earlier. The sensitive plants and the pine-apple now became frequent objects in English greenhouses. John Evelyn and Bishop Compton were eminent patrons of English horticulture during this age.