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arches are so natural that swallows and other birds, thinking to fly through, have dashed themselves against the wall.' With all his feelings for nature Evelyn had not advanced beyond his contemporaries in taste, and he was heartily pleased with the agreeable deceit,' as he calls it, ' of a painted river which eked out the apparent limits of a Parisian garden. The Luxembourg gardens he speaks of as a paradise, and says that he had taken extraordinary delight in its sweet retirements. The Duke of Orleans at that time inhabited the palace, and kept tortoises in great numbers. The Duke would not permit the wolves to be destroyed upon his domains, in consequence of which they became so numerous in the forest of Orleans as often to come and take children out of the very streets of Blois ! In our own days Stolberg noticed a similar effect of this preposterous passion for the chase,-cats were prohibited in the island of Ischia lest they should destroy the game, and when these useful animals had been extirpated the rats became so numerous that infants were not safe from them in the cradle.

Proceeding from France into Italy Evelyn notices with proper English feeling the disgusting sight of the gally-slaves at Marseilles, who, it seems, were made a show for the gratification of strangers!

'We went to visite the Gallys being about 25; the Captaine of the Gally Royal gave us most courteous entertainement in his cabine, the slaves in the interim playing both loud and soft musiq very rarely. Then he shew'd us how he commanded their motions with a nod and his whistle, making them row out. The spectacle was to me new and strange, to see so many hundreds of miserably naked persons, having their heads shaven close and having onely high red bonnets, a payre of coarse canvass drawers, their whole backs and leggs naked, doubly chayn'd about their middle and leggs, in couples, and made fast to their seates, and all commanded in a trise by an imperious and cruell seaman. One Turke he much favor'd, who waited on him in his cabin but with no other dress than the rest, and a chayne lock'd about his leg but not coupled. This gally was richly carv'd and gilded, and most of the rest were very beautifull. After bestowing something on the slaves, the captain sent a band of them to give us musiq at dinner where we lodged. I was amaz'd to contemplate how these miserable catyfs lie in their gally crowded together, yet there was hardly one but had some occupation by which, as leisure and calmes permitted, they gat some little monye, insomuch as some of them have, after many years of cruel servitude, been able to purchase their liberty. Their rising forward and falling back at their oare is a miserable spectacle, and the noyse of their chaines with the roaring of the beaten waters has something of strange and fearfull to one unaccustom'd to it. They are rul'd and chastiz'd by strokes on their backs and soles of theire feete on the least disorder, and without the least humanity; yet are they chereful and full of knavery.'—pp. 70, 71.

Here he and his companions bought umbrellas against the

heats,'

heats,' a precaution so novel for an Englishman at that time as to be noticed among the memorabilia of their journey. It is little more than half a century since they have been in general use' against the rain' in this country, and persons are yet living who remember the indignant ridicule which their first appearance excited in the populace. They embarked at Canes for Genoa, narrowly escaped shipwreck in doubling the point of Savona, and enjoyed a foretaste of Italy in the land-breeze which carried with it the perfumes of orange, citron, and jasmine flowers for divers leagues seaward,' a circumstance which affected Evelyn with so much delight that he recurs to it more than once. " If ever,' says Lassels,' I saw a town with its holiday clothes always on, it was Genoa.' Evelyn saw it in its beauty, before its bombardment by the French, and never, he says, was any artificial scene more beautiful to the eye, nor any place for its size, so full of well-designed and stately palaces. But the suddeu, and devilish passion' of a sailor here gave him a fearful sample of the Italian temper; the fellow was plying them for a fare, when another boatman interposed and took them in, enraged at this, the tears gushed out of his eyes, he bit his finger almost off by the joint, and held it up to the other as an assurance to him of some bloody revenge if ever he came near that part of the harbour again. The man perhaps felt himself wronged as well as supplanted; but Evelyn observes that though it was 'made a gally-matter' to carry a pointed knife, Genoa was nevertheless more stained with horrid acts of revenge and murder than any one place in Europe, or haply in the world. It was, perhaps, this temper of the Genoese which made Louis XI. when he was asked what he would do with Genoa if it were at his disposal, reply, that he would give it to the Devil. Labat, who is always lively and always malicious, says, that the inhabitants call their city Gena instead of Genoa, telle est leur œconomie: ils rognent tout jusqu'aux paroles-and he ascribes the invention of wafers to Genoese economy. On pesa les lettres, le poids en règle le prix. Les Genois ont trouvé le secret d'écrire beaucoup, et de payer peu pour le port. Ils se servent d'un papier aussi fin que notre papier à la serpente, écrivent menu, serré et laconiquement; ne font ni complimens, ni enveloppes; et comme les cachets quelques qu'ils soient ne laissent pas de peser, ils se servent d'une certaine pâte rouge et dure, on l'humecte avec un peu de salive, et on en touche légèrement l'endroit du papier, ou l'on applique sur le champ le cachet, et la lettre se trouve fermée, comme si on y avoit mis un peu de colle. J'ai apporté de cette pâte, rien n'est meilleure, et ne pese moins.' From this curious passage it would appear that wafers were not known in France when he published his Voyages d'Espagne et

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Italie in 1731. But they were certainly no new discovery when he saw them at Genoa in 1706. We have in our possession letters with the wafers still adhering which went from Lisbon to Rome twenty years before that time, and Stolberg observes that there are wafers and wafer-seals in the museum at Portici.

Evelyn noticed in the Genoese a very different character from that parsimony for which Labat swears at them; he speaks of the magnificent expenditure of the merchants, who, as there was little or no land in which they could invest their property, expended it in marble palaces and costly furniture. He admired their floors of red plaster, which became so hard and received so high a polish, that it might have been mistaken for porphyry, and he wondered that it was not used in England for cabinets and rooms of state. It is indeed surprising that notwithstanding the appalling frequency of fires we should continue to floor our houses with wood, as if to render them as combustible as possible. The aviary in the gardens of Prince Doria's palace pleased him as realizing Bacon's desire, who said he liked not such places,' unless they were of that largeness that they might be turffed, and have living plants and bushes set in them that the birds might have more scope and natural nestling, and no foulness appear on the floor.' Trees of more than two feet in diameter were growing in this prodigious cage, besides cypress, myrtles, lentiles, and other rare shrubs, which serve to nestle and perch all sorts of birds, who have air and place enough under their airy canopy, supported with huge iron work stupendous for its fabric and its charge.' Lassels says, that to make the poor birds believe they are rather in a wood than in a prison, the very cage hath put even the wood itself in prison.' It is about an hundred paces long, and fetcheth in a world of laurel and other trees.' This was indeed a splendid aviary, and yet but a splendid folly, effecting that by constraint which might have been accomplished so much more easily by better means. Any garden may be made an aviary without caging it in, by affording to the birds food and protection; for it is surprizing how soon the shyest birds may be taught to come to the hand that feeds them. We have seen wild-ducks come in flocks to a lady's call, and the water-hen hurry to the same voice with as much alacrity as the barn-door fowl.

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In his progress through Italy Evelyn's attention, according to the fashion of his age, was chiefly attracted by palaces and pictures, gardens and museums. Picturesque beauty was then so little regarded that Misson advises a traveller not to go on purpose to the Borromean islands unless he had a great deal of leisure: for he says, there is nothing very rare or extraordinary in them. A man

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who never saw but very ordinary things of that nature would doubtless admire these islands if he were suddenly transported thither, but they would never produce the same effect upon one that has seen a little of the world.' Thus he spoke of them, thinking of the islands alone, without the slightest reference to the glorious scenery by which they are surrounded; nor were they in his estimation more interesting for standing in the Lago Maggiore than they would have been in Whittlesea mere! But Evelyn, notwithstanding his taste for grottoes, parterres, and vistas, had a true feeling for better things; and when he got out of the trammels of art was fully capable of enjoying the world of nature. The following description will be read with pleasure, though it should remind the reader of a sublimer picture in Burnet's Telluris Theoria Sacra.

Next morning we rod by Monte Pientio, or, as vulgarly called, Monte Mantumiato, which is of an excessive height ever and anon peeping above any clowds with its snowy head, till we had climbed to the inn at Radicofany built by Ferdd the greate Duke for the necessary refreshment of travellers in so inhospitable a place. As we ascended we entered a very thick, solid, and dark body of clowds, wch look'd like rocks at a little distance, which lasted neare a mile in going up; they were dry misty vapours, hanging undissolved for a vast thicknesse, and obscuring both the sun and earth so that we seemed to be in the sea rather than in the cloudes, till, having pierced through it we came into a most serene heaven, as if we had been above all human conversation, the mountaine appearing more like a greate island than joyn'd to any other hills, for we could perceive nothing but a sea of thick clouds rowling under our feete like huge waves, ever now and then suffering thee top of some other mountaine to peepe through, which we could discover many miles off; and betweene some breaches of the clouds we could see landskips and villages of the subjacent country. This was one of the most pleasant, newe, and altogether surprizing objects that I had ever behold.

On the sum'it of this horrid rock (for so it is) is built a very strong Fort, garrison'd, and somewhat beneath it is a small towne; the provisions are drawne up with ropes and engines, the precipice being otherwise inaccessable. At one end of the towne lie heapes of rocks so strangely broaken off from the ragged mountaine as would affright one with their horror and menacing postures. Just opposite to the inn gushed out a plentifull and most useful fountaine which falls into a great trough of stone, bearing the Duke of Tuscany's armes. Here we din'd, and I with my black lead pen tooke the prospect.'—vol. i. p. 88. At Rome he was what he calls very pragmatical, by which he means very busy in going over the regular course of sight-seeing. He engraved his name amongst other travellers' in the globe of St. Peter's cupola, and had the honour, by the special desire of a Dominican friar, of standing godfather to a Turk and a Jew,—a remarkable instance of liberality in the friar, unless he doubted the

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sincerity of his neophytes, and thought a heretic sponsor good enough for them. Naples he resolved to make the non ultra of his travels; sufficiently sated, he says, with rolling up and down, and resolving within myself to be no longer an individuum vagum, if ever I got home again, since from the report of divers experienced and curious persons I had been assured there was little more to be seen in the rest of the civil world after Italy, France, Flanders, and the Low Country.' The persons who pronounced this opinion must have had little curiosity with their experience, or little experience with their curiosity. The satiety which Evelyn confesses is one which every traveller must sometimes have experienced, in an hour of exhaustion, when he feels the want of that comfort and that perfect rest, one of which can only be enjoyed in his own country, and the other in his own house. But the appetite soon returns for that living knowledge which travelling imparts, and so was it with Evelyn. Finding at Venice an English ship bound for the Holy Land, he determined to visit Syria, Egypt, and Turkey, engaged for his passage, and laid in his sea-stock; but to his great mortification the vessel was pressed for the service of the state to carry provisions to Candia, then newly attacked by the Turks.

Journals and books of travels are among those works which acquire by time more value than they lose they are the subsidiaries of history, and preserve the memory of many things which history disdains to notice, as trifling while they are trivial, but which become objects of curiosity when they are obsolete and ancient. Among the preposterous fashions of the Venetian women Evelyn remarks that they wore very long crisped hair of several streaks and colours, which they made so by a wash, dishevelling it on the brims of a broad hat that had no crown, but in its place a hole through which they put their heads, and they were seen at the windows drying their party-coloured tresses in the sun. This seems to have been peculiar to Venice. Lassels, speaking of the Italians in general, says the women wash their heads weekly in a wash made for the nonce, and dry them again in the sun to make their hair yellow, a colour much in vogue there among the ladies.' It was the age of coloured beards in England. The princesses and beauties of chivalrous romances have usually golden or flaxen hair, and for this reason, that when those romances were written all highborn persons were of unmixed Teutonic blood. The predilection which the southern poets of the seventeenth century show for the same colours must be explained by this fashion of staining the hair.

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Here Evelyn suffered for the indiscreet use of the hot-bath after the oriental fashion going out immediately into the city after he had

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