says Parton, "visited Isham Randolph's mansion on the James, in and about which, it is said, a hundred servants attended. There he must have seen the eldest daughter of the house at the time she was busy with preparations for her marriage, and he may have stayed to the wedding-feast, and cheered the bride and bridegroom as they rode away on horseback to their new home."

Bartram, like his garden, flourished to a green old age, and "he died," Parton adds, "upon the approach of the British army, during the Revolutionary War, of terror, lest the pride of his life should be trampled into ruin by the troops." He was fortunate in the society and friendship of many literary and eminent characters in America, including Dr. Franklin, Dr. Colton, and James Logan, private secretary and business man of William Penn.

A foreign traveller has left a picturesque account of John Bartram and his garden as they appeared to him during a visit before the American Revolution, in 1769. Mr. Bartram, his guest, his family, and his slaves, all sat down to one large table well stored with wholesome fare-the blacks at the foot, the stranger near the host-the whole group and picture recalling one of the patriarchal pictures of the Old Testament. Some of the slaves whom he had freed remained with him until their death. The low grounds of his farm, at first a putrid, swampy soil, were ultimately reclaimed by draining and ditching. He was born in the year 1701 in Chester County, in Pennsylvania. His grandfather, John Bartram, with his family, came from Derbyshire, England, among the adherents of William Penn when the colony was established and the city of Philadelphia was founded, A.D. 1682. Born in a new-settled country far away from Europe, he acquired the best instruction that the poor schools could afford at that time; and, in his passionate pursuit of plants and trees and flowers, he obtained with difficulty the rudiments of the learned languages, which he

studied with extraordinary application. Early inclined, farmer as he was, to medicine and surgery, his researches into the vegetable kingdom afforded him infinite delight, and supplied him with the ingredients for many cures. He was, in fact, a philosopher, and, whether ploughing or sowing his fields or mowing his meadows, his active mind was investigating the vegetable system and all animated nature. A great traveller in search of specimen seeds and roots, and slips and grafts, together with birds, turtles, squirrels, and other animals, he penetrated into Canada, the Southern wilderness, and examined the shores of Lakes Ontario and Cayuga. At the advanced age of seventy he made a tour into East Florida, having previously travelled many thousands of miles in Virginia and Carolina. While in Florida he embarked on a boat at Picoletta, on the river St. John, which he navigated with three oars and a sail, collecting specimens of flowers and plants and water-fowl. Nothing daunted him in his eager thirst for curious and nondescript vegetables and fossils, and in his thorough inquiry into the economy of nature. These he exchanged for the diverse varieties of European rivers and soils.

Here we quote again from Parton: "It is to his correspondence with the scientific men of the Old World that Europe owes the profusion of American trees and shrubs that adorn so many parks and gardens and highways, and that America was indebted, among other benefits, for those rare varieties of plums, cherries, apricots, gooseberries, and other fruits." Linnæus called him the greatest natural botanist in the world, and his fame became so great that he was appointed botanist to the King of England at fifty guineas a year. He was a true philanthropist, a rare example of temperance, a bountiful host, a man of astonishing energy and endurance, and a Quaker. He was an early Abolitionist, and one of the slaves he reared from a child, and whom he set free at between twenty and thirty, remained with his family until the end of a long life..

His son, William Bartram, born at the paternal mansion near Philadelphia, in 1739, was also a distinguished man, and, though a merchant, a sincere and conscientious botanist. In 1782 he was elected professor of botany in the University of Pennsylvania, but, from ill-health, declined the appointment. Besides his discoveries in botany, he prepared the most complete table of American ornithology before the appearance of the book of Wilson, whom he assisted in the commencement of that work. Such was his profound love of this delightful science that he wrote a description of a celebrated plant a few minutes before his death, which occurred suddenly, by the rupture of a blood-vessel, July 22, 1823, in the eighty-fifth year of his age.

Bartram's Garden was always celebrated, and Watson, in his 'Annals," speaks of the founder and of his son with the greatest enthusiasm.

All these incidents recur with peculiar force as the visitor stands upon this storied spot and traces back the record of more than a century and a half, surrounded as he is by the attractions added by modern wealth and progress.

Some time since, in company with a few friends, I visited the old Bartram place, then in the possession of Mr. Eastwick, for the purpose of enjoying the difference between the period above described and the year of our Lord 1874. Mr. Eastwick received us cordially, and escorted us through the grounds. They were full of botanical wonders, and crowded with Revolutionary memories. Washington and Franklin were frequent visitors to the old philosopher and botanist; indeed, no distinguished stranger, foreigner or otherwise, failed to seek his acquaintance. Alexander Wilson, the celebrated ornithologist, taught school in this immediate vicinity, and some of his greatest works were written with the information supplied by John Bartram, who was as well acquainted with birds as with flowers, in Bartram's study in the old stone house, which still stands, and which we carefully examined.

The numerous living and perennial monuments to the memory of John Bartram in these historic grounds are preserved with religious care by their present owner. The old mansion, built in 1770, is in excellent condition. Bartram did the masonwork with his own hands. The Ionic columns of the ancient portico and decorations of the window-frames, carved by himself in sandstone, with neat scroll-work, give evidence of his taste for the beautiful. A huge sandstone hollowed out in the form of a basin, also by himself, was used for watering horses, and remains in the position where he originally placed it. Over one of the upper-story windows is the following quaint inscription: "Tis God alone, Almyty Lord, The holy One, by me adored. "1770."

The Virginia creeper, or American trumpet-flower, with massive gnarled roots and clustering branches, clings to the southern front, interspersed with climbing roses reaching to the roof of the building; and the evergreen ivy completely covers one portion of it with its glossy leaves, and creeps underneath the portico, its fresh young leaves presenting a fine contrast to the darker and more luxuriant growth of other years. Here, too, is a large and evidently very ancient tree, entitled "Christ's Thorn." It came from Jerusalem originally, and, as it is the only specimen growing in that locality, it is assumed that it takes its name from the sad purpose for which it was used at the crucifixion of our Saviour. All the varieties of the English esculus and American horse-chestnut and buckeye are now in full bloom, displaying a gorgeous spectacle with their profusion of scarlet, pink, white, and yellow pyramidal blossoms. The finest, and probably the oldest, specimens of the imported purple beech, all the maples, magnificent oaks of the different varieties, the elms, sycamores, locusts, and, in fact, all of the common as well as most of the rarer varieties of the cultivated and deciduous trees of our temperature, and several

supposed to be confined to the tropics, grow here luxuriantly. There is a dense undergrowth of shrubbery, including remarkably fine specimens of the American rhododendron, the white and purple magnolia, the wild honeysuckle trained and trimmed into shapely trees, the Barberry lilacs, shrubs, all the varieties of box from the miniature edging to the full-grown tree, a fine specimen of the Juniper prostratum, cedars, hemlocks, arborvitæs, and many other varieties of evergreens. They had evidently been planted with due regard to symmetry, yet avoiding the geometrical plan, and adhering more closely to the curved lines which Nature delights in, and which add so materially to the beauty and attractiveness of the landscape garden. But it is not alone in the collection of trees and shrubbery that Bartram's Garden is interesting to the botanist. Those who love Nature for her own sake enjoy this wonderful exhibition without being familiar with the classes of plants, trees, and flowers, and the properties they possess. Nearly every foot of the sward contains a lovely group of some kind. The rocket grows profusely in several shades and varieties, while violets and tiny blossoms of many kinds are seen on every hand, and many of the varieties of hardy lilies. The white flag and other plants which in the olden time were common, but have latterly disappeared from fashionable modern gardens, grow undisturbed in the rich soil, and perpetuate themselves year after year, glorified by the foliage from the trees which overshadow them.

Conspicuous in this storied solitude towered the giant cypresstree which John Bartram brought from Florida in 1749, when it was a twig, and could easily be put in one of his saddle-bags. He predicted that it would grow to an immense height, and it has attained an altitude of a hundred and seventy feet, with a circumference at the base of twenty-eight and a half feet! The cypress-tree, of which I saw many magnificent specimens during my several visits to the South, is of Eastern origin; its wood is heavy, aromatic, and durable; foliage dark and