And the plot of culinary herbs occupied some sheltered spot within the moat; which when it is recollected how many other requisites of existence and defence were also compressed into the same space--soldiers, arms, and machines of war; sleeping and eating rooms; room for the stabling and fodder of horses, and often of cattle; space for daily exercise, martial or recreative; bowls, tilting or tennis,--when cooped up by their enemies, or made cautious by critical times, small indeed must have been the space or the leisure for gardens. Even in 1540, Leland in his Itinerary, tells us that our nobility still dwelt in castles, and there retained the usual defences of moats, and drawbridges. This was especially the case, the nearer they approached to the Scotch or Welsh borders; though in the vicinity of London villas and palaces had long sprung up. At Wressel Castle, near Howden, in Yorkshire, he says, “The gardens within the mote, and the orchardes without, were exceeding fair. And yn the orchardes were mounts, _opere topiario_, writhen about with degrees like the turnings in cokil shelles, to come to the top without payn.” The career, indeed, by which our gardens have reached their present condition, has been, as I have said, the career of many ages, revolutions, and stupendous events. It is not only curious, but most interesting to trace all those circumstances which have contributed to raise horticulture to its present eminence,--the great national events, the extension of discovery, of the arts, of general knowledge; the deep ponderings in cells and fields; the achievements of genius, of enterprise; the combinations of science, and the variations of taste which have brought it to what it is. The history of our gardening is, in fact, the history of Europe. The monks, whose religious character gave them an extraordinary security, as they were the first restorers of agriculture, so they were the first extenders and improvers of our gardens. Their long pilgrimages from one holy shrine to another, through France, Germany, and Italy, made them early acquainted with a variety of culinary and medicinal herbs, and with various fruits; and amongst the ruins of abbeys we still find a tribe of plants that they thus naturalized. The crusades gave the next extension to horticultural knowledge; the growing commerce and wealth of Europe fostered it still farther; and the successive magnificent discoveries of the Indies, America, the isles of the Pacific and Australia, with all their new and splendid and invaluable productions, raised the desire for such things to the highest pitch; and made our gardens and greenhouses affluent beyond all imagination. What hosts of new and curious plants do they still send us every season! From every corner of the earth are they daily reaching us: the average value of the plants in Loddige’s gardens is calculated at 200,000_l._ But what a blank would they now be but for