The Horticultural Society's Garden. - October 3. We have little to add, respecting the conservatory, to what we have said in our preceding volume, p. 351. and 352. The workmanship is excellent, and the plants are looking well, but the structure, considered with reference to design and taste, is, in our humble opinion, objectionable to a degree that would justify the use of much stronger language than we could apply, without the risk of being accused of bad feeling on the subject. It is difficult to conceive anything worse than the entrance at the west end, which forms the terminating object to a straight walk. We are totally ignorant to whom the design of this mode of descending and entering is to be attributed, but this we will say, that if any private gentleman's gardener had committed such a blunder he would have deservedly lost his place. How different might have been this entrance, if the parties connected with the placing of the building had only taken the levels of the ground, and considered the structure with reference to all the details connected with it, such as the west entrance, the boiler, the hot-water pipes, the surrounding terrace, &c., previously to putting it down ! Even admitting that it had been determined to enter this large hand-glass, as it may be called, under the rim, how different would the appearance have been if this rim had been raised a few feet higher ? The heating pipes, in that case, might have been placed under the level of the path, and a current of air established, not by communicating with the open air, as is now done, but with the air of the house, in Mr. Kewley's manner; reserving the power of admitting the exterior air also among the pipes at pleasure. Besides this mean entrance; we have a hideous chimney to the hot-water apparatus. Surely this object might have been built in better taste. Even the commonplace idea of a Grecian column, carried into execution so as to produce a very striking effect at the Coventry railway station, and not higher than the chimney in the Horticultural Society's Garden, would have been incomparably better. At present, the little zinc tube, stuck into the thick clumsy mass of compoed brickwork, reminds us of the third-rate houses of the suburbs. But we object altogether to entering this structure under the rim; and we also object to the lameness and monotony of the round end, which would have been relieved by a porch, either of glazed work or of masonry. These remarks should have been illustrated by a section, to show the descent into the west entrance; by a ground plan, to show that this west entrance forms a termination to a straight broad walk; and by a view, to show that the sides of the descent are decorated with some stones in the way of rockwork, unworthy of the dignity of architecture, but certainly very well worthy of the scene of which they form a part. In the arboricultural department a great many new pines and other ligneous plants have been raised from seeds sent home by M. Hartweg, with the greatest success, by Mr. Gordon. The taste which the Society is creating for rare and beautiful trees and shrubs throughout the country, by the distribution of the seeds of plants sent home by their collector, and of the plants raised in the garden from these seeds, is a redeeming point in its character; and must be considered, along with the Catalogue of Fruits prepared by Mr. Thompson (known throughout Europe and North America as perhaps better skilled in fruits than any other man in existence), and the distribution of grafts of selected and new fruits, as veiling the sins of the garden with reference to design and taste.
