The blankness and barrenness of all the ground between the south front and the street was even more painfully apparent in Leigh Hunt's time, who in his "Old Court Suburb" drew attention to this salient defect nearly fifty years ago. "The house," he remarked, "nominally possesses 'gardens' that are miles in circumference.... There is room enough for very pleasant bowers in the spaces to the east and south, that are now grassed and railed in from the public path; nor would the look of the Palace be injured with the spectator, but rescued from its insipidity." His suggestion has been acted on to a certain extent in recent times, but too partially in our view. =Queen Anne's Orangery.= Queen Anne is the sovereign to whom we owe the erection of this exceedingly fine specimen of garden architecture--one of the most beautiful examples of the art of the Renaissance in London, if not in England. If we could say with truth that there ever was a "Queen Anne style," this would, indeed, be a representative and unrivalled example of it--as it certainly is of Sir Christopher Wren's, which, developing in the reign of Charles II., was definitely formed and fixed in that of William and Mary. To an artist like Wren to beautify the ordinary and useful was to give expression to one of the highest functions of architecture; and therefore in this mere store-house for the Queen's treasured plants and flowers, probably also a place where Queen Anne liked to sit and have tea, we have a building--unimportant though its object may be considered--which attains the very acme of his art, exhibiting all his well-balanced judgment of proportion, all the richness of his imagination in design. The building of this greenhouse was begun in the summer of the year 1704. A plan, prepared by Sir Christopher at Queen Anne's express orders, was submitted to and approved by her, and the original estimate, which is still in the Record Office, dated June 10th, 1704--probably drawn up by Richard Stacey, master bricklayer, and entitled: "For building a Greenhouse at Kensington" at a cost of £2,599 5_s._ 1_d._--was accordingly laid before the officers of Her Majesty's Works, Sir Christopher Wren, John Vanbrugh, Benjamin Jackson, and Matthew Bankes, for a report thereon. Their opinion, after "considering the measures and prices," was that "it may be finished soe as not to exceed the sum therein expressed, viz., £2,599;" and the Lord Treasurer was accordingly prayed "to pay £2,000 into the Office of Works that it may be covered in before winter, according to Her Majesties expectation."