Addison, also, in No. 477 of the "Spectator," expatiated on the beauties of the gardens: "Wise and London are our heroick poets; and if, as a critic, I may single out any passage of their works to commend, I shall take notice of that part in the upper garden, at Kensington, which was at first nothing but a gravel pit. It must have been a fine genius for gardening, that could have thought of forming such an unsightly hollow into so beautiful an area, and to have hit the eye with so uncommon and agreeable a scene as that which it is now wrought into." The cost of these improvements amounted to several thousands of pounds--in levelling, planting, turfing, gravelling. The appearance of the east and south gardens in the reign of Queen Anne will, as we have already said, best be conveyed by Kip's plate; the general plan of the new enclosed garden to the north, north-east, and north-west, by Rocque's engraving, published in 1736. From this we see that Queen Caroline, who embarked in so many gardening enterprises, left Queen Anne's new gardens substantially intact; though she made a clean sweep of all the old fantastic figured flower beds and formal walks of William III.'s _parterres_ to the south and east of the Palace; substituting therefor bare and blank expanses of lawn and wide gravel paths. During the reigns of George III. and George IV. all the gardens were allowed to become more and more uncared for; and at last those to the north of the Palace were destroyed altogether. The "old Wilderness" and "old Gravel Pit" of Queen Anne and the early Georges now exist no longer--converted by an insane utilitarianism partly into park land, the rest into meadow. The old gardens to the east, already flattened out and spoilt by Queen Caroline, now exist but in part; the small portion, which has not been covered with hideous forcing houses and frames, is, however, to a certain extent nicely shrubbed, and closed in by trees and hedges. The site of the old south gardens, curtailed now to a small enclosure, which retains little of the old English picturesque air, might with advantage, we think, be less stiff and bare. There is here little more than a clump or two of trees and shrubs, a wide gravel path, and two large vacant lawns, separated from the public walk by a wire fence, and between this and High Street mere expanses of grass. Fortunately, the devastating notions of the "landscape gardener" whose one idea was so to arrange the ground surrounding a house as to look as if it stood plump in the middle of a park--for all the world like a lunatic asylum--are not quite so much in favour as they were.