[6] This was the third botanic garden, established about the year 1673, in England. In a very old manuscript the spot is thus quaintly described:—“Chelsea physic garden has great variety of plants, both in and out of green-houses; their perennial green hedges, and rows of different coloured herbs, are very pretty, and so are the banks set with shades of herbs in the Irish style.” The drawing Mr. Fairholt was so good as to make for this little book, gives a faithful representation of the statue of Sir Hans Sloane, by Rysbach, the two famous cedars, and the water-gate; and as this time-honoured garden is about to be converted into “a square of houses,” I am glad of the opportunity to preserve a memorial of it. It is not only sacred to science, but full of pleasant memories: Evelyn has sate beneath those cedars; Sir Joseph Banks used to delight in measuring them, and proving to his friends that the girth of the larger “exceeded twelve feet eleven inches;” and it is said that, when Dean Swift lodged at Chelsea, he was often to be found in this “physic garden.” When we call to mind the number of persons of note who selected the “sweet village of Chelsea” as a residence, there can he no lack of associations for this spot. Between the garden and the college is the place (according to Maitland) where CÆsar crossed the Thames.[26a] Philip Rose, Esq., the Hon. Sec. and Founder of the Institution.[26b] Independent of advantages afforded within the present Hospital, application for orders to obtain “out of door” advice and medicine have been very numerous; and they have not unfrequently been made by persons far superior to those who are supposed (but most erroneously) to be the only recipients of charitable aid. I entreat the reader’s indulgence while I briefly relate one circumstance within my own knowledge. A few months ago, a lady (for poverty is no destroyer of birth-rights) requested from me a ticket for an out-door patient; and, in answer to my inquiries, at length, with trembling lips and streaming eyes, confessed it was for her husband she needed it. She had made what is called a love-match; her family refused to do anything to alleviate the poverty which followed his misfortunes, unless she forsook her husband; her knowledge of the most sacred duty of woman’s life, and, indeed, I believe, poor thing, her enduring love, prevented her having the great sin to answer for, of abandoning him in his distress; and her skill in drawing and embroidery enabled her to support her sick husband and herself. “I can do that,” she said, “and procure him even little luxuries, if I have not a doctor’s bill to pay; but the medicines are so expensive, that he will be comfortless unless we can receive aid from this Institution; I have paid, during the last two weeks, twelve shillings for medicine.” His case was utterly and entirely without hope, but, as she told me afterwards, no words could express the alleviation to his sufferings, mental and physical, which followed the assistance he obtained at the Hospital.[27a] “To provide him with an Asylum, to surround him with the comforts of which he stands so much in need, to ensure him relief from the sufferings entailed by his disease, to afford him spiritual consolation, at a period when the mind is, perhaps, best adapted to receive, with benefit, the divine truths of religion, and to enable those who depend upon him to earn their own subsistence, are the great objects of this new Hospital.”—Appeal of the Committee.[27b] “To all who have either felt the power of the destroyer, or who have reason to fear his attack—and what family throughout the country has not had sad experience of his presence?—an earnest appeal is now made, in the full assurance that those who give their support to this Institution will aid in materially lessening the amount of misery.”—Appeal of the Committee.