terrace 400 paces long, with a large semicircle in the middle, from where are beheld the Queen’s (Anne’s) two parks and a great part of Surrey: then, going down a few steps, you walk on the bank of a canal 600 yards long and 17 broad, with two rows of limes on either side. On one side of this terrace a wall, covered with roses and jessamines, is made low to admit the view of a meadow full of cattle just beneath (no disagreeable object in the midst of a great city), and at each end is a descent into parterres with fountains and waterworks. From the biggest of these parterres we pass into a little square garden, that has a fountain in the middle and two green-houses on the sides ... below this a kitchen-garden ... and under the windows ... of this green-house is a little wilderness full of blackbirds and nightingales.” This is truly an entrancing picture of a town garden. The waterworks, those elaborate fountains then in vogue, were supplied by water pumped up from the Thames into a tank above the kitchen, which held fifty tons of water. Buckingham House was then a red-brick building, consisting of a central square structure, with stone pillars and balustrade along the top, and two wings attached to the main building by a colonnade. It was this style of house when King George III. bought it, originally for a dower-house for Queen Charlotte, instead of Somerset House, where the Queens-Dowager had previously lived. These formal gardens were not suited to the taste of the time, and George IV. had all the garden altered, as well as the house rebuilt by Nash. The whole of the parterres, terraces and fountains and canal were swept away, and most of the lime-trees cut down. A wide lawn and five acres of ornamental water, glades, walks and thickets took their place. When first made the water was severely criticised by a writer of the landscape school, the chief fault he found being that too much was visible at once from the path which encircled it, so that the limits were not well concealed. This seems to have been altered to the satisfaction of later critics. Dennis, writing in 1835, gives a plan in which the path has been made a little distance from the water’s edge, and the outline broken by clumps of trees and a promontory, which later on was turned into an island, on which a willow from Napoleon’s tomb at St. Helena is said to have been planted, though no old willow now exists. This writer gives great praise to Aiton, who superintended all the execution of the plans. The pavilion in the grounds was added in 1844, and decorated with paintings of scenes from Milton’s _Comus_ by Eastlake, Maclise, Landseer and other artists, with borders and gilt ornaments by Gruner.