Among the scientific nurseries that clothe almost every outskirt of the city, may perhaps be found grander exotics, or more luxuriant varieties of floral beauty; but these fragments of botanic skill and lore are fair specimens of the inheritance bequeathed to the sons of the soil by those great master-minds whose gardens once drew Evelyn from the metropolis upon a visit to this then pre-eminent seat of wealth and magnificence. “My Lord’s Gardens,” that skirted the water-side, whose quadrangle contained a bowling-green, a wilderness, and garden, with walks of forty feet in breadth surrounding them, have passed away, a fragment of the wilderness alone remains to mark the site of the glorious displays of wealth and fashion once paraded among them; but the name, associated with the memory of the times, is a star of the first magnitude, in the galaxy of the city’s firmament of great men. Sir Thomas Browne, the philosopher, the physician, the naturalist, the antiquarian, and the botanist, the associate and friend of the most eminent men that graced the age in which he lived, and the historian whose works have enriched the literature of the world, stands first in the long list of names that are linked with the beauties of the vegetable kingdom; a city that has sent forth a Lindley, a Hooker, and a Smith, to be professors in the great world of science, as his followers, has cause, indeed to honour the memory of him who sowed the first seeds in the garden, that has reared such giants from its soil. But there is yet another picture to be viewed of homely traffic; the Christmas market-day, when the old place and people seem to be in the zenith of their glory. Each poultry-stall overflowing with the turkeys, geese, and fowls, that have not found an exit through the myriad avenues opened for their flight to every province, town, and city in the land. There they lie in state, sharing the sovereignty of the season, with bright-gemmed holly boughs and pearly mistletoe, that deck and garnish every pad, and stall, and bench, and lie heaped up in shining stacks of magnitude that may well suggest to the young novice a question as to how the slow-growing holly and rare parasite could have been found year after year in such profusion. Country walks, holly-skirted lanes, and park enclosures, may tell something of the one; and alas! for the poetry of the Druids and the oaks, the apple orchards now claim almost the sole honour of giving shelter to the other—the ancient deity of the woods; they will scarce allow the king of the forest a partial share in the tribute offerings to merry Christmas.