In the front of this greenhouse is another sunk parterre. To the left, as you look towards the Thames, is the large oriel which Queen Elizabeth set in the tower that stands between a fine piece of Wolsey's building and the rigid stateliness of the end of Wren's south front. The low walls stand, it is likely, as they stood in Henry's days, and on them may now be trained dwarf creepers, where the bright gillies with "the mynts and other sweet flowers" stood out against the red brick in the old days. Architecture is brought in to aid the attraction of horticulture. Steps lead down, in the little garden hard by, to the fountain in the midst; and, again, low walls and trim hedges shut off one walk and one design from another. Rising a few feet and walking southwards, you would come upon the terrace that overlooked the river.
I am tempted to quote Ellis Heywood's fascinating description of that other garden, some miles farther down the stream, where Henry's faithful Chancellor, Wolsey's successor, walked with his children.
"There each child, each servant, had his own domain and his own work. There the friends gathered to talk with More," he says in his pretty Italian memory of the martyr More,[1] " on a little lawn set in the midst of the garden, on which was a little grass 'mount.' It was a happy spot, crowned with perpetual verdure, having flowering shrubs and the branches of trees woven together in sort so
- ↑ "II Moro," Florence, 1556, pp. 13-14
