She planted the trees on "Queen Anne's Mount," and gave gorgeous fêtes in the Royal Gardens, whose woodland scenery possesses a peculiar charm all its own. The noble groves and avenues of elm trees recall St. Cloud and St. Germain in the neighbourhood of Paris, and are quite exceptionally fine. Thus Matthew Arnold wrote:-- "In this lone open glade I lie, Screened by deep boughs on either hand; And at its end, to stay the eye, Those black crowned, red-boled pine trees stand." [Illustration: ST. JAMES'S PALACE.] And Chateaubriand declares:-- "C'est dans ce parc de Kensington que j'ai médité l'Essai historique: que, relisant le journal de mes courses d'outre mer, j'en ai tiré les amours d'Atala." And Haydon says:-- "Here are some of the most poetical bits of tree and stump, and sunny brown and green glens and tawny earth." George II. died here very suddenly on October 25, 1760, but the Sovereigns of the House of Hanover chiefly made use of the place by assigning apartments therein to their younger children and near relatives. Here it was that Edward Duke of Kent lived with his wife Victoria of Saxe-Coburg, and here their only daughter, the renowned Queen Victoria, was born, May 24, 1819, and here she resided till her accession to the throne in 1837. Kensington Palace, then, is chiefly celebrated for its associations with William III. and Queen Victoria. In the brief account of the royal palaces here given, it will be seen that none of the sites, with the exception of St. James's, remained for any long period of time the actual residence of the Sovereign, while three--Westminster, Bridewell, and the Savoy--had passed out of royal hands for residential purposes before the Reformation of religion was completed. Another curious fact relates to the origin of the title to these sites, inasmuch as three of these estates were obtained from some ecclesiastical corporation, as the Archbishop of York, or the Hospital of St. James, though Buckingham Palace was bought from Sir Charles Sheffield, and Kensington from the Earl of Nottingham.