had been rubbed down and all his pores were open, it cost him one of the greatest colds he ever had in his life. He speaks of the striking silence of Venice, a city in which there was no rattling of coaches nor trampling of horses, and where nothing disturbed the singing of the nightingales which were kept in every shop shutting your eyes, he says, you would imagine yourself in the country. A man had lately come to his death there by a most uncommon accident; he was doing something to the famous clock in the square of St. Mark, celebrated next to that of Strasburg for its many movements;' and while thus employed he stooped his head just in such a place and in such a point of time, that the quarterboy struck it with his hammer, and knocked him over the battlements. Here and at Naples criminals were executed by a machine like the guillotine. At Padua he was elected Syndicus Artistarum, the greatest honour which could be conferred on a stranger in that University, from which, however, he excused himself because it was chargeable,' and would also have interfered with his intended progress. There he learnt to play on the theorbo; bought for winter provision three thousand weight of grapes and pressed his own wine, which proved excellent;' and in consequence, as he supposed, of drinking it according to the custom cooled with snow and ice, was seized with an angina and sore throat, which had nearly proved fatal; but old Salvatico (that famous physician) made him be cupped and scarified in the back in four places, which began to give him breath and consequent life, for he was in the utmost danger.' There too he attended the famous Anatomy Lecture which was celebrated with extraordinary apparatus, lasting almost a whole month.' During this famous course' three bodies were dissected; those of a man, a woman, and a child. ، The one, he says, ، was performed by Cavalier Vestlingius and Dr. Jo. Athelsteinus Leonanas, of whom I purchased those rare tables of veins and nerves, and caused him to prepare a third of the lungs, liver, and nervi sexti par with the gastric veins, which I sent into England, the first of that kind which bad been sent there, and, for aught I know, in the world. When the Anatomy Lectures, which were in the mornings, were ended, I went to see cures done in the hospitals; and certainly, as there are the greatest helps and the most skilful physicians, so there are the most miserable and deplorable objects to exercise upon; nor is there any, I should think, so powerful an argument against the vice reigning in this licentious country, as to be spectator of the misery these poor creatures undergo.'

,

Having now been two years in Italy he prepared for his return, in company with Mr. Abdy, a modest and learned man'-Waller the poet, then newly gotten out of England, after the parliament had

had extremely worried him, for attempting to put in execution the commission of array'-and one Captain Wray, son of Sir Christopher,' whose father had been in arms against his Majesty, and therefore, says Evelyn, by no means welcome to us. He calls him,

6

however, elsewhere, a good drinking gentleman. They crossed the Simplon by a track which, according to the report of the natives, went above the line of perpetual snow, but which, like the present road, brought them down upon Brigue. Evelyn was indisposed when they arrived at the end of a day's journey at a place called Neveretta, by the head of the lake of Geneva. Being extremely weary,' he says, and complaining of my head, and finding little accommodation in the house, I caused one of our hostesses daughters to be removed out of her bed, and went immediately into it whilst it was yet warm, being so heavy with pain and drowsiness, that I would not stay to have the sheets changed; but I shortly after paid dearly for my impatience, falling sick of the smallpox as soon as I came to Geneva,-for by the smell of frankincense, and the tale the good woman told me of her daughter having had an ague, I afterwards concluded she had been newly recovered of the small pox.' He seems, however, to have erred in supposing that this was his punishment for consenting to sleep in unclean sheets; for it appears that he was at the time sickening with the disease, and the day after he reached Geneva, he was constrained to keep his chamber, with such pains in the head as if his very eyes would have dropped out, and a stinging over the whole body; he had the disorder favourably, notwithstanding bad treatment before it was understood, and worse after it had declared itself.

Evelyn repeats the so often repeated assertion, that the Rhone passes through the lake of Geneva with such velocity as not to mingle with its waters. Of all the fables which credulity delights to believe and propagate, this should appear the most impossible to obtain credit, for the Rhone, when it enters the lake, is both of the colour and consistency of pease-soup, and it issues out of it perfectly clear, and of so deep a blue that no traveller can ever have beheld it without astonishment. Evelyn had seen it in both places, and yet repeats the common story, which had it been fact instead of fable, would have been less remarkable than the actual and as yet unexplained phenomenon of its colour at Geneva. Adultery was then punished with death in that city. Among other military exercises he saw huge balista or cross-bows shot in, being such as they formerly used in wars before great guns were known: they were placed in frames, and had great screws to bend them, doing execution at an incredible distance.' Having reached Paris, rejoiced that he was gotten so near home, and meaning to rest there before he went farther, he past the only time in his whole life that

was

6

was spent most idly,' but soon recovered his better resolutions and learnt the German and Spanish tongues, now and then, he says, refreshing my dancing and such exercises as I had long omitted, and which are not in much reputation amongst the sober Italians.' He frequented a course of chemistry, and M. Mercure began to teach him on the lute, though to small perfection;' and having become intimate in the family of Sir Richard Browne, the British resident at the court of France, and sat his affection on a daughter of the family, he married her in the fourteenth year of her age, he being seven and twenty.-She lived with him, happy in his love and friendship, fifty-eight years and nine months, and was then left a widow; and when in her will she desired to be buried by his side, she speaks thus of her excellent husband: his care of my education was such as might become a father, a lover, a friend and husband for instruction, tenderness, affection and fidelity to the last moment of his life, which obligation I mention with a gratitude to his memory ever dear to me; and I must not omit to own the sense I have of my parents care and goodness in placing me in such worthy hands.'

6

About three months after his marriage he was called into England to settle his affairs, leaving his wife with her parents. This was in the autumn of 1647, and on his arrival he saw the king at Hampton Court, and gave him an account of several things which he had in charge. Charles was then in the hands of his enemies. Evelyn remained in England till the conclusion of that tragedy, and after unkingship, as he calls it, had been proclaimed, he obtained a passport from Bradshaw for France. Having occasion to visit England again in 1650, he made the same passport serve for his return, as he could no longer procure one without taking the oath to Cromwell's government, which he had determined never to do. -Rather indeed than submit to it, he once counterfeited a pass, and luckily he found at Dover that money to the searchers and officers was as authentic as the hand and seal of Bradshaw himself.' Evelyn never mentioned the name of Bradshaw without coupling with it some opprobrious epithet; he abhorred his political conduct, and evidently did not like his personal character. But Bradshaw perhaps had some feeling of good-will towards him, as one to whose family he was obliged, and whose worth he knew; and apprehending no danger from him would not willingly molest him for his loyalty. Without some such protection he would hardly have escaped without molestation, connected as he was so directly with the royal party. He seems to have waited in France for the result of the last great effort of the Royalists; for a few weeks after the battle of Worcester he resolved to leave that country finally and return to England. For this resolution there were both private

and

and political motives. The estate of his father-in-law at Deptford was suffering much for want of some person to secure it from the usurpers, so that to preserve this property, and take some care of his other concerns, he was advised to reside on it, and compound with the government. Charles authorized him to do so, and charged him also with the perilous commission of corresponding with him and his ministers, a commission peculiarly dangerous, because his close connection with Sir Richard Browne exposed him so naturally to suspicion. Fortunately for him and for the nation, while Croniwell lived there was so little hope of overthrowing him, that no bold designs were undertaken; and after his death none were required to accelerate the destruction of a government which was manifestly falling to pieces of itself.

After he had been a few months in England and put his affairs in order, he sent for his wife. Colonel Morley, then one of the council of state, who had been his school-fellow, gave him a pass for her, wrote to the magistrates and searchers at Rye to shew her all civility at her landing, and did him many other civilities which he notices as a great matter in those days. The vessel in which she embarked passed through the Dutch fleet, and was mistaken for a fishing vessel,-thus she escaped capture. Evelyn himself was less fortunate, when having left his wife with her mother, Lady Browne, at Tunbridge, because the small-pox was rife in and about London, he went on to prepare for their reception. Near Bromley, at a place called the Procession Oak,' two fellows struck him from his horse, took away his sword, and dragged him into a thicket a quarter of a mile from the highway, where they robbed him, tied his feet, bound his hands behind him, and then set him upright against an oak and left him, swearing that if he made any outcry, they would return and cut his throat, an operation which one of them would have performed upon the spot, had it not been for his companion. After two hours painful exertion, he succeeded iu turning his hands palm to palm, and was then enabled to loose himself. They robbed him of some valuable jewels, which he recovered, and one of the fellows was shortly taken. As Evelyn did not wish to hang him, he would not appear against him, especially when it was understood that his father was an honest old farmer in Kent. He was charged with other crimes and condemned, but was reprieved to a more miserable end; for refusing afterwards to plead upon some fresh charges, he underwent the peine forte et dure. Lady Browne died in the ensuing month, and Evelyn obtained permission to have the burial service performed at her funeral, after it had been seven years disused at Deptford church. Perhaps this was one of those acts of kindness for which he was beholden to

Morley,

Morley, for these were the high days of fanaticism when no church was permitted to be open on Christmas day.

Sir Richard Browne being so decidedly what in the gentle language of the Puritans was called a malignant, his interest in the estate at Deptford, great part of which was held in lease from the crown, had been sequestered, and sold. Evelyn now purchased it, as Charles had authorized him to do, with a promise that if ever it should please God to bring about his restoration, he would secure the property to him in fee-farm. It cost him £5500, and a few days after the purchase was completed, the following entry appears in his journal: This day I paid all my debts to a farthing. O blessed day! And now he commenced that undisturbed and even course of life which might almost be considered as realizing the fairest ideal of human felicity, so happy was it for himself and his family, so useful to his generation, and so honourable in the eyes of just posterity.

The estate at Sayes Court, when it became his property, was wholly unadorned, consisting of one entire field of an hundred acres in pasture, with a rude orchard and a holly hedge. He began immediately to set out an oval garden. This was the beginning of all the succeeding gardens, walks, groves, enclosures, and plantations there;' and he planted an orchard, new moon, wind west.' The house was out of repair; he made large additions to it, 'to my great costs,' he says, and better I had done to have pulled all down at first, but it was done at several times.' Dr. Hammond used to speak of a certain man who, when he was upon his death-bed, enjoined his son to spend his time in composing verses, and cultivating a garden, because he thought that no temptation could creep into either of these employments. The good man seems not to have considered that it is very easy to compose such verses as shall be very mischievous; or perhaps he depended upon the virtuous principles of the son whom he thus advised; but he was right in recommending gardening as a wholesome and delightful occupation

for

spare time. It may be too much to say of it, as has been said, that it is the purest of human pleasures; but it was in a garden that man was placed when he came pure from the hand of his Creator, and it is in gardens that they who are blest with means and opportunity may create an image of Eden for themselves, as far as earth is now capable of the resemblance. An Eden of Evelyn's invention, indeed, would have differed widely from Milton's; his scheme of a Royal Garden comprehended knots, trayle-work, parterres, compartements, borders, banks and embossments, labyrinths, dedals, cabinets, cradles, close-walks, galleries, pavilions, porticos, lanterns and other relievos of topiary and hortulan architecture; fountains, ettos, cascades, piscines, rocks, grotts, cryptæ, mounts, precipices

VOL. XIX. XXXVI.

and