"hurried there in less than an hour, though it be ten miles distant, so furiously did these foremen drive.' The Dutch are not so celebrated for the celerity of their motions in these days. On the way to the Hague he observed divers leprous poor creatures dwelling in solitary huts on the brink of the water, and permitted to ask the charity of passengers, which is conveyed to them in a floating box that they cast out.' Perhaps this is the latest notice of lepers in Europe being thus thrust apart from the rest of mankind, and Holland is likely to be the country in which the disease would continue longest. At the Hague he visited the Queen of Bohemia, a woman who, more than any other princess of her age, seems to have won and deserved the admiration of all who knew her. Her presence chamber was then hung with black, and she was keeping a fast-day for her husband's death with as little to console her in any earthly prospect of the future as in looking back upon the past. 6 Evelyn did not reach Gennep till four or five days after it had capitulated; he was, however, complimented by being received a volunteer in Captain Apsley's corps, and took his turn in watching on a horn work, and trailing a pike,' till the fortifications were repaired. He found himself on hot service for a young drinker,' and after a week's stay he took his leave, being pretty well satisfied with the confusion of battles and sieges, if such,' he says, that of the United Provinces may be called, where their quarters and encampments are so admirably regular, and orders so exactly observed, as few cities exceed it for all convenience.' He remained about three months in the Netherlands and then returned to England. Among the remarkable things which he had noticed in his journal during this journey, is the case of a woman who had been married five and twenty times, and was then prohibited from marrying again, yet it could not be proved that she had ever made any of her husbands away, though the suspicion had brought her divers times to trouble.' He was particularly pleased with Antwerp, and with nothing more than those delicious shades and walls of stately trees which render the fortified works of the town one of the sweetest places in Europe.' Long will it be before any traveller can again speak of the delicious shades and stately trees of Antwerp! Caruot, in preparing to defend the place, laid what were then its beautiful environs as bare as a desert. The remark which he makes upon the view from the tower of the cathedral is curious. 'The sun,' he says, 'shone exceeding hot, and darted its rays withany intermission, affording so bright a reflection to us who were above, and had a full prospect of both land and water about it, that I was much confirmed in my opinion of the moon's being of some such substance as the earthly globe consists of; perceiving all the adjacent country, at so small a horizontal distance, to represent out A 3 such such a light as I could hardly look against, save when the river and other large waters within our view appeared of a more dark and uniform colour, resembling those spots in the moon supposed to be seas there, according to our new philosophy, and viewed by optical glasses.' On his return to England he studied a little, but danced and fooled more.' But this was no age for vanities. The civil war broke out, and Evelyn went with his horse and arms to join the king at Brentford, but he was not permitted to remain there, (this is the phrase he uses,) because the retreat of the royal army, which immediately took place, would have left him and his brothers exposed to ruin without any advantage to his Majesty. He retired to his brother's house at Wotton, and began to improve the gardens; when the Covenant was pressed he absented himself, but finding it 'impossible to evade the doing very unhandsome things,' he obtained the king's licence to travel, and set out for a longer journey, accompanied by his old fellow collegian Thicknesse. Twice at the very outset had this journey well nigh proved fatal: mistaking the tide as they came before Calais, in weather which was snowy and untoward enough,' they struck on the sands with no little danger; and crossing an overflown stream on the way to Boulogne, in darkness, and in a storm of rain, hail, and snow, his horse slipt and had almost been the occasion of his perishing. The churches upon the continent hold the first place among those rareeshows by which the curiosity of a young English traveller is invited. Evelyn was much amused with the treasures at St. Denis, which contained at that time some of the most remarkable relics, true and false, any where in existence: among the latter were a likeness of the Queen of Sheba, Solomon's drinking cup, Judas's brass lanthorn, and Virgil's stone mirror; among the former Charlemagne's set of chess men, 'full of Arabic characters.' There were also the effigies of the late French kings in wax, like ours in Westminster, covered with their robes, with a world of other rarities.' Paris appeared to him, for the materials the houses are built with, and its many noble and magnificent piles, one of the most gallant cities in the world: he describes it large in circuit, of a round form, very populous, but situated in a bottom environed with gentle declivities, rendering some places very dirty, and making it smell as if sulphur were mingled with the mud.' This odour, for which certainly the nature of the ground was not in fault, provoked the spleen of Peter Heylyn, who had visited France some years before Evelyn, at a time of life when 'both his wits and fancies (if ever he was master of any) were in their predominancy.' This I am confident of,' he says, that the nastiest lane in London is frankincense and juniper to the sweetest street in this city. The ancient by-word was was (and there is good reason for it) Il destaint comme la fange de Paris: had I the power of making proverbs I would only change il destaint into il puit, and make the by-word ten times more orthodox. The fortifications of this town are but trifles,-the only venom of the streets is a strength unto it more powerful than the ditches or the bulwark of St. Martins. It was therefore not unjudiciously said of an English gentleman, that he thought Paris was the strongest town in Christendom, for he took strong in that sense as we do in England when we say such a man hath a strong breath. These things considered it could not but be an infinite happiness granted by nature to our Henry V. that he never stopt his nose at any stink, as our chronicles report of him; otherwise, in my conscience, he had never been able to keep his court there. But that which most amazed me is, that in such a perpetuated constancy of stinks, there should yet be found so large and admirable a varietya variety so special and distinct, that any chemical nose, (I dare lay my life on it,) after two or three perambulations, would hunt out blindfold each several street by the smell, as perfectly as another by his eye.' Paris is now less obnoxious to this reproach than many other places; and the three stinking cities of Europe are Lisbon, Edinburgh, and Geneva. The garden of the Tuileries Evelyn describes as rarely contrived for privacy, shade, or company. It had then some curiosities' so much in French taste that it is wonderful they should not have been preserved, a labyrinth of cyprus, and an artificial echo redoubling the words distinctly, and never, he says, without some fair nymph singing to it. Standing at one of the focusses which is under a tree or little cabinet of hedges, the voice seems to descend from the clouds; at another as if it was under ground.' During the reign of the sovereign people, the commune ploughed up the turf in these gardens to plant potatoes there, and they planted potatoes also in the parterres! The taste of Evelyn's age, which continues to be the taste of the French, and having rooted itself in their habits and literature is likely, notwithstanding all their versatility, to continue indelible, was exemplified wherever he went. The Archbishop of Paris in his garden at St. Cloud had a Mount Parnassus, not indeed so costly a plaything as the elaborate toy of Titon du Tillet, but a grotto' or shell-house' on the top of the hill, with a fair cupola, the walls painted with the muses, many statues placed about it, some of which were antique and good, and within ‘divers water-works and contrivances to wet the spectators.' At Cardinal Richelieu's villa, the arch of Constantine was painted on a wall in oil, as large as the real one at Rome, so well done that even a man skilled in painting may mistake it for stone and sculpture. The sky and hills which seem to be between the arches such a light as I could hardly look against, save when the river and other large waters within our view appeared of a more dark and uniform colour, resembling those spots in the moon supposed to be seas there, according to our new philosophy, and viewed by optical glasses. On his return to England he studied a little, but ' danced and fooled more.' But this was no age for vanities. The civil war broke out, and Evelyn went with his horse and arms to join the king at Brentford, but he was not permitted to remain there, (this is the phrase he uses,) because the retreat of the royal army, which immediately took place, would have left him and his brothers exposed to ruin without any advantage to his Majesty. He retired to his brother's house at Wotton, and began to improve the gardens; when the Covenant was pressed he absented himself, but finding it 'impossible to evade the doing very unhandsome things,' he obtained the king's licence to travel, and set out for a longer journey, accompanied by his old fellow collegian Thicknesse. Twice at the very outset had this journey well nigh proved fatal: mistaking the tide as they came before Calais, in weather which was 'snowy and untoward enough,' they struck on the sands with no little danger; and crossing an overflown stream on the way to Boulogne, in darkness, and in a storm of rain, hail, and snow, his horse slipt and had almost been the occasion of his perishing. The churches upon the continent hold the first place among those rareeshows by which the curiosity of a young English traveller is invited. Evelyn was much amused with the treasures at St. Denis, which contained at that time some of the most remarkable relics, true and false, any where in existence: among the latter were a likeness of the Queen of Sheba, Solomon's drinking cup, Judas's brass lanthorn, and Virgil's stone mirror; among the former Charlemagne's set of chess men, 'full of Arabic characters.' There were also the effigies of the late French kings in wax, like ours in Westminster, covered with their robes, with a world of other rarities.' Paris appeared to him, for the materials the houses are built with, and its many noble and magnificent piles, one of the most gallant cities in the world: he describes it large in circuit, of a round form, very populous, but situated in a bottom environed with gentle declivities, rendering some places very dirty, and making it smell as if sulphur were mingled with the mud.' This odour, for which certainly the nature of the ground was not in fault, provoked the spleen of Peter Heylyn, who had visited France some years before Evelyn, at a time of life when both his wits and fancies (if ever he was master of any) were in their predominancy.' 'This I am confident of,' he says, 'that the nastiest lane in London is frankincense d juniper to the sweetest street in this city. The ancient by-word was was (and there is good reason for it) Il destaint comme la fange de Paris: had I the power of making proverbs I would only change il destaint into il puit, and make the by-word ten times more orthodox. The fortifications of this town are but trifles,—the only venom of the streets is a strength unto it more powerful than the ditches or the bulwark of St. Martins. It was therefore not unjudiciously said of an English gentleman, that he thought Paris was the strongest town in Christendom, for he took strong in that sense as we do in England when we say such a man hath a strong breath. These things considered it could not but be an infinite happiness granted by nature to our Henry V. that he never stopt his nose at any stink, as our chronicles report of him; otherwise, in my conscience, he had never been able to keep his court there. But that which most amazed me is, that in such a perpetuated constancy of stinks, there should yet be found so large and admirable a variety— a variety so special and distinct, that any chemical nose, (I dare lay my life on it,) after two or three perambulations, would hunt out blindfold each several street by the smell, as perfectly as another by his eye.' Paris is now less obnoxious to this reproach than many other places; and the three stinking cities of Europe are Lisbon, Edinburgh, and Geneva. The garden of the Tuileries Evelyn describes as rarely contrived for privacy, shade, or company. It had then some curiosities' so much in French taste that it is wonderful they should not have been preserved, a labyrinth of cyprus, and an artificial echo redoubling the words distinctly, and never, he says, without some fair nymph singing to it. Standing at one of the focusses which is under a tree or little cabinet of hedges, the voice seems to descend from the clouds; at another as if it was under ground.' During the reign of the sovereign people, the commune ploughed up the turf in these gardens to plant potatoes there, and they planted potatoes also in the parterres! The taste of Evelyn's age, which continues to be the taste of the French, and having rooted itself in their habits and literature is likely, notwithstanding all their versatility, to continue indelible, was exemplified wherever he went. The Archbishop of Paris in his garden at St. Cloud had a Mount Parnassus, not indeed so costly a plaything as the elaborate toy of Titon du Tillet, but a grotto or shell-house' on the top of the hill, with a fair cupola, the walls painted with the muses, many statues placed about it, some of which were antique and good, and within divers water-works and contrivances to wet the spectators.' At Cardinal Richelieu's villa, the arch of Constantine was painted on a wall in oil, as large as the real one at Rome, so well done that even a man skilled in painting may mistake it for stone and sculpture. The sky and bills which seem to be between the A 4 arches |