character who had aspersed it; and it was into Evelyn's ear that Ossory breathed the last overflowings of a wounded spirit and a broken heart.

Charles II. treated him always with affability and kindness, knowing and respecting his worth and his unsullied virtue. Evelyn was much affected by his death. Writing on the day when James was proclaimed, he says, I can never forget the inexpressible luxury and profaneness, gaming and all dissoluteness, and as it were total forgetfulness of God (it being Sunday evening) which this day se'nnight I was witness of, the king sitting and toying with his concubines, Portsmouth, Cleaveland, and Mazarine, &c. a French boy singing love-songs in that glorious gallery, whilst about twenty of the great courtiers and other dissolute persons were at basset round a large table; a bank of at least £2000 in gold before them, upon which two gentlemen who were with me made reflexions with astonishment. Six days after, all was in the dust!' He deplored his loss, he said, with all his soul, for many respects as well as duty. A fear of the political consequences undoubtedly was one; for Evelyn well knew that the welfare of this kingdom depends vitally upon the preservation of that church, the subversion of which was necessarily considered as a duty by a Catholic king. He looked upon the defeat of Monmouth's enterprize as a signal deliverance, believing that if it had not been early checked it would have proceeded to the ruin of the church and government. Such an inundation of fanatics, he says, and men of impious principles must needs have caused universal disorder, cruelty, injustice, rapine, sacrilege, and confusion, an unavoidable civil war, and misery without end. But when the times became more trying, Evelyn decidedly opposed those measures which, had they been successful, would have certainly destroyed the civil and religious liberties of Great Britain. When Lord Clarendon was sent to Ireland, he was nominated one of the Commissioners for executing the office of Privy Seal during his lieutenancy there. He was not displeased' when the creation of Mrs. Sedley, Countess of Dorchester, passed the Privy Seal at a time when he was absent, and when the appointment of the Secretary to the Ambassador at Rome was sealed, he observes that through Providence he was not present. But when a docket was to be sealed, importing a lease of twenty-one years to the king's printer for printing Missals and other books which, by act of parliament, were expressly forbidden to be printed or sold, Evelyn seeing that the law was clear in this case refused to put the seal to it; and on a similar occasion he persisted in his refusal when Archbishop Sancroft, whom he consulted, gave him no other encouragement than that of advising him to follow his own conscience ; and the Lord Treasurer told him that if, in conscience, he could

dispense

dispense with it, there was no other hazard. And when James, beginning to perceive his danger, released the bishops, Evelyn, who had good information of the plans of the court, gave Sancroft good intelligence and bold advice; he pointed out the crafty designs of the Jesuits by which the unfortunate king was directed; observed that in all the declarations which had been published in pretended favour of the Church of England as by law established, room was carefully left for a subdolous construction of the words-as if the Church of Rome were the only lawful one; advised him, therefore, that in all extraordinary offices the words Reformed and Protestant should be added to that of the Church of England by law established, and whosoever, said he, threatens to invade or come against us to the prejudice of that church, in God's name, be they Dutch or Irish, let us heartily pray and fight against them.'

Yet Mr. Evelyn rather submitted to the consequences of the Revolution than acquiesced in them: the necessity of resisting the plans of James he fully acknowledged, but he seems to have thought that the rights of the son should have been respected, even if it were justifiable that the father should be set aside. He had a personal regard for James, and had augured much happiness to the nation, as to its political government, from his infinite industry, sedulity, gravity and great understanding and experience of affairs,' nothing as he thought being wanting to accomplish our prosperity, but that he should be of the national religion. Evelyn's character would have been less amiable if he could at once have cast off all attachment to a family which he had served in evil and in prosperous fortunes. He noticed the unbecoming levity with which Queen Mary took possession of her apartments at Whitehall; and at first he did not render justice to the abilities of William, whom he thought of a 'slothful sickly temper,' a man as inferior in all outward graces to the two last kings, as he was superior to them in sterling wisdom and solid worth. Evelyn feared the republican spirit which was at work, manifestly, as he thought, ‘undermining all future succession of the crown and prosperity of the Church of England;' and he saw that the general imposition of an oath, which might properly be required from all who came into office into the new government, would occasion great injustice and evil. That oath was thought to have been driven on by the Presbyterians.' God in mercy send us help, says Evelyn, and direct his counsels to his glory, and the good of his church! The non-jurors were for many years the butt of contempt and obloquy, but notwithstanding their political error history will do justice to the consistent integrity of their conduct. After the Revolution, as before it, they bravely persisted in what they believed to be their duty, regardless of the consequences to themselves.

Evelyn was now sixty-nine years old; the recurrence of his birthday is always entered in his Journal with a prayer. He had lately been visited by severe afflictions;-his daughter Mary, at the age of nineteen, had been cut off by the small-pox, a beautiful creature in mind as well in form and features, highly accomplished, of a fine understanding, studious and yet unaffectedly humble, pious, cheerful, affectionate, in disposition like an angel. She was a little miracle, says her father, while she lived, and so she died,—the joy of my life, and ornament of her sex and of my poor family. Few persons, we believe, will peruse without tears the pages in which he records her death, and his own resignation under this great affliction. Within two months he lost another daughter, soon after her marriage, by the same frightful disease, which in those days was only less destructive* than the plague. And it was his painful lot to follow to the grave his only remaining son in the forty-fourth year of his age, a man of much ability and reputation, worthy to have supported the honour of his name. Notwithstanding these repeated sorrows and the weight of nearly fourscore years, Evelyn still enjoyed uninterrupted health and unimpaired faculties; he enjoyed also the friendship of the wise and the good, and the general esteem beyond any other individual of his Torn as that age was by civil and religious factions Mr. Evelyn had no enemy; as a lover and liberal benefactor of science and learning he held that place in public opinion which in our days has so long and so deservedly been held by Sir Joseph Bankes; a more enviable distinction can hardly be imagined. Among the honourable events of his latter life it should not be omitted that as the first treasurer of Greenwich Hospital, he laid one of the foundation stones. When he was at Amsterdam, in his youth, he admired nothing so much in that interesting city as the hospital for the lame and decrepid soldiers, it being, for state, order and accommodation, one of the worthiest things that the world can show of that nature.' He had now the satisfaction of founding in his own country the most splendid of all such establishments.

age.

In the year 1694 he left Sayes Court, after having resided there more than forty years, to pass the remainder of his days at Wotton, where he was born, in his brother's house; his brother having also lost his sons, had settled the family-estate upon him. The fate of Sayes Court, which he had beautified according to his own taste with so much cost and care, is worthy of notice; first it was let to no less remarkable a personage than Admiral Benbow, then only a captain, and Evelyn had, he says, the mortification of seeing every day much of his former labours and expense there impairing for want

* 1695. 13 Jan. The deaths by small-pox increased to 500 more than in the preceding week.'

of

of a more polite tenant. The next inhabitant was a much greater personage and a worse tenant, it was the Czar Peter; while in his occupation the house is described, by a servant of Mr. Evelyn, as full of people, and right filthy. It was hired for him and furnished by the King; but the damage which he and his retinue did to the house itself and the gardens, during a residence of only three weeks, was estimated by the King's surveyor and his gardener at £150. The gardens indeed were ruined. It is said that one of Peter's favourite recreations was to demolish the hedges by riding through them in a wheelbarrow. When he had resided about five years at Wotton his brother died, in the eighty-third year of his age, of perfect memory and understanding. Mr. Evelyn had a grandson, the only male of his family now remaining, a fine hopeful youth, and he was seized with the small-pox at Oxford; the alarm which this intelligence occasioned may well be conceived, fatal as the disease had proved to their blood, but happily the youth recovered, and Evelyn's few remaining years were not embittered by any fresh affliction.

1702. 31 Oct. Arriv'd now to the 82d year of my age, having read over all that pass'd since this day twelvemonth in these notes, I render solemn thanks to the Lord, imploring the pardon of my past sins, and the assistance of His grace; making new resolutions, and imploring that He will continue His assistance, and prepare me for my blessed Saviour's coming, that I may obtain a comfortable departure, after so long a term as has ben hitherto indulg'd me. I find by many infirmities this yeare (especially nephritic pains) that I much decline; and yet of His infinite mercy retain my intellects and senses in greate measure above most of my age. I have this yeare repair'd much of the mansion-house and severall tenants' houses, and paid some of my debts and ingagements. My wife, children and family in health, for all wch I most sincerely beseech Almighty God to accept of these my acknowledgm's, and that if it be His holy will to continue me yet longer, it may be to the praise of His infinite grace, and salvation of my soul. Amen.'-vol. ii. pp. 77, 78.

On his next birth-day he acknowledges the great mercies of God in preserving him, and in some measure making his infirmities tolerable. Soon after, when service was performed in his own house on a Sunday, because the cold and wet weather had prevented him from attending church in the morning, the minister preached upon the uncertainty of life with pertinent inferences to prepare us for death and a future state. I gave him thanks, says Mr. Evelyn, and told him I took it kindly as my funeral sermon.' He lived, however, to see two birth-days more, and then, in the eighty-sixth year of his age, fell asleep in the Lord.

The portrait of Evelyn prefixed to these volumes is from a picture painted for Mr. Pepys by Kneller, and represents him hold

ing his Sylva' in his right hand. It was by this book that the author was chiefly known till the publication of this Diary; his other writings had past away, but the Sylva remained a beautiful and enduring memorial of his amusements, his occupations and his studies, his private happiness and his public virtues. It was the first book printed by order of the Royal Society, and was composed upon occasion of certain queries sent to that Society by the Commissioners of the Navy. The government had been seriously alarmed by the want of timber, which it was certain must soon be felt; owing in part to the wasteful consumption of glass-houses and furnaces, at that time greatly multiplied, and burning wood instead of coal, and, in part, to the 'prodigious havoc made by such as lately professing themselves against root and branch, either to be reimbursed their holy purchases, or for some other sordid respect, were tempted not only to fell and cut down, but utterly to extirpate, demolish, and raze as it were all those many goodly woods and forests, which our more prudent ancestors left standing for the service of their country.' To no person so well as Evelyn could the office have been assigned of remedying this evil and averting the fatal consequence which must inevitably have ensued to our naval power, and thereby to the strength, the welfare, the independence, and the life of England. He effected this great object by awakening the land-holders to a sense of their own and their country's interests, He produced a volume upon the subject; Charles II., who loved the navy, and like his brother would have made a better admiral than a king, twice thanked him personally for the work; he had the yet more gratifying reward of living to know that many millions of timber-trees had been propagated and planted at the instigation and by the sole direction of that book,-one of the few books in the world which completely effected what it was designed to do. 'While Britain,' says Mr. D'Israeli, retains her aweful situation among the nations of Europe, the Sylva of Evelyn will endure with her triumphant oaks. It was an author in his studious retreat, who, casting a prophetic eye on the age we live in, secured the late victories of our naval sovereignty. Inquire at the Admiralty how the fleets of Nelson have been constructed, and they can tell you that it was with the oaks which the genius of Evelyn planted.' If. Charles II. had instituted, as he once intended, and as he ought to have done, an order of the Royal Oak,' Evelyn, though he repeatedly declined the honour of knighthood, would probably have accepted it for the sake of his double claim.

6

The Sylva has no beauties of style to recommend it, and none of those felicities of expression by which the writer stamps upon your memory his meaning in all its force. Without such charms A Discourse of Forest Trees and the Propagation of Timber in