So it is that we find the old work at Penshurst confirmed and renewed, [Illustration: “GLOIRE DE DIJON,” PENSHURST FROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OF SIR REGINALD HANSON BART.] and new work added of a like kind, such as will make use of the wider modern range of garden plants, while it retains the dignity and grandeur of the fine old place. The house stands on a wide space of grass terrace commanding the garden. On a lower level is a large quadrangular parterre, with cross paths. In each of its square angles is a sunk garden with a five-foot-wide verge of turf and a bordering stone kerb forming a step. The beds within, filled with good hardy plants, have bold box edgings eighteen inches high and a foot thick, that not only set off the bright masses of flowers within, but have in themselves an air of solidity and importance that befits the large scale of the place. They represent in their own position and on their lesser scale somewhat of the same character as the massive yew hedges, twelve feet high and six feet through, that do their own work in other parts of the garden. These grand yew hedges and solid box borders have responded well to good planting and tending, for the late Lord de L’Isle knew his work and did it thoroughly. Not only was the ground well prepared, but for several years after planting the young trees were provided with a surface dressing that prevented evaporation and provided nutriment. This was carefully attended to, not only in the case of the yews but of the box edgings also. The cross-walks of the parterre do not meet in the middle, but sweep round a circular fountain basin, in the centre of which stands a statue of what may be a young Hercules, brought from Italy by Lord de L’Isle. The slender grace of the figure might at first suggest a youthful Bacchus, but the identity in such a statue is easily established by looking for one or other of the characteristic attributes of Hercules; these usually are the lion’s skin, the upright-growing hair on the forehead, the poplar wreath or the battered, flattened ears. But the statue stands too far from the walk to be exactly identified. That the nearer portions of the garden are on the same lines as the older planting is shown by an engraving in Harris’s “Kent,” where the parterre is, now as then, bounded by terraces on two of its sides, the house side and that of the adjoining churchyard, to which access is gained by a beautiful gabled gateway of brick and stone, the work of Tudor times. The old churchyard has its own beauty, while the church and a fine group of elms are seen from the garden above the wall, and take their own beneficent place in the garden landscape.