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ART. IV.-Diary and Correspondence of John Evelyn, F.R.S., Author of the "Sylva." To which is subjoined the Private Correspondence between King Charles I. and Sir Edward Nicholas; and between Sir Edward Hyde, afterwards Earl of Clarendon, and Sir Richard Browne. Edited from the Original MS. at Wotton. By WILLIAM BRAY, Esq., F.A.S. Four vols. 8vo. London: Henry Colburn.

JOHN EVELYN was the son of a stout old Cavalier - one of a family whose principle it was to love peace, yet whose fortunes were achieved by the manufacture of gunpowder. John was born at Wotton, in Surrey, on the last day of October, 1620, when Charles I. was King. His parents were a happy and an honoured couple. They had four thousand a-year to maintain their state and keep up their hospitality, and they did both in a creditable manner, in spite of the exigencies of the times and the demands of a numerous family. When John was four years old he was sent to learn what he could in the village school, held over the porch of Wotton Church. The son of the sheriff thus kept young fellowship with the children of the peasantry, and the equality thus taught him in the dawn of life he considered but as a natural thing until that life closed. He did not, indeed, look upon every one beneath him as his equal, but every man before God was his brother. In the presence of the great he was not abashed— with the lowly before him he felt no exaltation. He lost his mother when he was fourteen years of age: it was his first great grief. She was a true-hearted English matron, graceful in form, fair in feature, true of heart, doubly true--true to man and true to God. She died at the early age of thirty-seven, after twenty-two years of happy wedded life. Her death-bed was a scene of most becoming dignity: on it lay a daughter of God submissive to her Father's will: around it knelt her husband and their children, submissive too, but with an anguish at their hearts which is not often given to mortal experience, but which, when given, is long enduring. Three years subsequently he repaired to Balliol, when Laud was Chancellor of Oxford, and when Evelyn thought that peace was in the Church and about the Throne. It is a curious circumstance that he was not confirmed until after he had taken the sacrament, and then, as it appears, without thinking less of the rite than it deserved, yet more out of curiosity than any higher motive. In 1640 his father left him and his brothers

and sisters to battle with a storm the precursors of which were now discernible, and the gravity of which he could not mistake when he saw with his own eyes Strafford's head pay the penalty of Strafford's errors and good intentions. In such a season there was more attraction for a quiet young gentleman abroad than at home; and Evelyn, accordingly, spent four months in the Low Countries, now trailing a pike for an hour in the trenches of a beleaguered city-now drinking Rhenish with bitter Brownists and sybarite Baptists, who appear to have passed their days on a most unctuous principle. On his return he studied a little, he says, at the Middle Temple, but he acknowledges that he "danced and fooled still more." It certainly was not the time for either of the latter pastimes, and Evelyn himself was ashamed of them after a while. The King whom he loved was then at bloody issue with the irate Londoners, and Evelyn took horse to join in the battle of Brentford. The tardy ally only arrived when the royal army had gained that fruitless victory. He did not, like Horace, lose his shield: he, simply, never risked it. Finding prudence and promise of success on the Parliament side, and a disunion deadly to all chance of triumph on that of the King, and feeling that it would be childish folly to risk either life or estate for a cause that, in his eyes, was only to be despaired of, he withdrew to his gardens at Wotton; and, like many great men who have turned their backs on the fierce contests of the field or the world, he took to the cultivation of philosophy and cabbages. This conduct was more sagacious than gallant; but it must not be inferred therefrom that Evelyn wanted courage. His moral courage was great, and he ventured his life for Charles II. (most unworthy of the danger run for his sake), by negotiating with men of note, for his restoration, when discovery could only conduct him, as he well knew, to the scaffold and the headsman. Lest his inclinations should lead him again to join an array of the Royalists, he resolved once more to go abroad. He sent his Majesty the gift of a horse, and got in return the royal permission to travel; and good use he made of it. He did not, as he truly says, go abroad to count steeples, but to observe, to record, and to learn. He passed through France, Italy, and Switzerland, seeing all, as he strangely believed, that the civilized world could afford as worthy of looking at. Not only do the spirited pages of the "Diary" give evidence of his powers of observation, but his " Correspondence" contributes to this testimony in a still higher degree; and there is reference in these volumes to a still more extended notice of his travels than is

here to be found, and which reference only gives birth to regret that the fuller pages giving record of his travelled experience have perished. He was absent, altogether, four years. During this time he mingled study with amusement, and applied himself to both with an earnestness that is quite edifying. He travelled at a time when more perils surround the way than could now be found over the same extent of ground in almost any portion of the world; but the perils maintained excitement and rendered the route less rapid of transit, but more romantic of incident, than either rail or high road. During the period of his absence, while he was passing from scene to scene, exchanging dear delights, exercising an economy worthy of an older head, and occasionally travelling with the sons of men who, at home, were occupied most busily in overthrowing the monarchy-while he was passing from the smells and society of Paris to the gay horrors of the Marseilles gallies-while studying men at fairs, in courts, in mad houses, and in prisons-admiring (in the old-fashioned sense of the word) the "heathenish pomp" of Rome-passing unscathed through the peculiar temptations of Naples and of Venice, talking less about them than the pedantic Coryat, and probably less acquainted with them, than that loquacious pedestrian was, while mingling in a thousand varied scenes and holding intercourse with so many varied men, the royal fortunes of England were making fatal shipwreck before the blast that was sweeping his native land. The only real peril that made actual visitation on himself throughout his journey, visited him in that substantial danger of the period, the desolating small-pox. It was the result of his own selfishness-a failing which never possessed him but at this moment, and which well nigh cost him his life. He arrived late at an inn, in a secluded Swiss village, where he was told there was no room. The exhausted traveller insisted upon the host's daughter leaving her bed he was obeyed, and, without scruple, he leaped into the hot sheets abandoned by the obese nymph. The result was a serious attack of small-pox which assailed him as soon as he reached Geneva. He lay for a time in extreme danger, but his naturally strong constitution prevailed. He rallied, and ultimately recovered in spite of a multitudinous medical attendance, and remedies without number or reason.

As soon as he was convalescent, Evelyn repaired to Paris, and into the gaieties of the capital he flung himself, we were about to say, without reserve; but that is a term which, applied to matters of dissipation, never characterized Evelyn's course. If he enjoyed the season of relaxation, it was because

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he did not neglect that of labour; and, even in the glittering capital of France, his books and learned researches engaged a solid portion of his time. Among the hearths at which he was welcomed was that of Sir Richard Browne, the English King's ambassador, and a man who throughout Oliver's Proteetorate maintained, within his residence in Paris, the public performance of divine worship according to the forms of the Church of England, which Cromwell had suppressed for a time in England. At the ambassador's hearth the mutual affection of parents and children kept court, and all the virtues were enthroned among them. Such a home had charnıs for our young traveller, and in one of the daughters of the ambassador he recognized the pre-shadowing of the mistress of another circle, stationed in love and gladness, at some future hearth of his own. The wooing had the promise and quality of that which is "not long a-doing;" and, in a few weeks, the childlike daughter of the ambassador and ambassadress became the wife of Evelyn. He left her for a considerable period with her mother, to learn more of those matronly virtues which she had seen in constant practice since she had enjoyed the powers of observation; and he betook himself to England. On his arrival, he found the king a prisoner within his own palace of Hampton Court, and Roundheadism triumphant. Whitehall was metamorphosed: he penetrated therein while the rebels were in council, and heard "terrible villainies," among others Hugh Peters, recommending with pious pertinacity the murder of the King. Not long after, the deed was consummated, and kingship was swept away with the blood and sawdust of the royal scaffold. Evelyn, established at Sayes Court, makes mournful record of the terrible deed-deed the more terrible that, in regard to its victim, it was undeserved, and, with respect to the policy of England and her prospects, it was entirely unnecessary. But no grief, either public or private, ever impressed Evelyn with the conviction that the world, its uses, its advantages, or its gaieties, were to be abandoned because a cloud was over all. execution of the King was bewailed; but, not long after, the now master of Sayes Court, Deptford, was enacting the gallant, and treating fair ladies to the delicacies of Spring-gardens. He was less of a hero, it will be seen, than a sage, and he undoubtedly exhibited common sense by being so. The Church of England never had, to speak generally, a worthier son than he among her laity-one who loved her more, or was more true to her when some, even her own ordained ministers, proved false. He tells, with mingled grief

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and indignation, of her trials, of the silencing of her preachers, and how he, among others, was compelled to have common prayer and sacrament by stealth at home; but with the record he is satisfied, and refuses no glad gifts because one is withheld; and he, accordingly, enjoyed himself discreetly, even amid private and national sorrows. From July, 1649, to February, 1652, he was constantly passing between France and England, visiting his young wife, and, we strongly suspect, not idle in furthering the cause of Charles the Second, a prince less then, than after, unworthy of the exertions made for him by his true-hearted servants. At length his wife arrived, not without perils from adverse fleets at sea, and assumed the graceful presidency over the new household at Sayes Court. "Waste not, want not," was the motto there. There was liberality, but no extravagance; hospitality, but no inordinate profusion; enjoyment, but no rioting; and, if generous bowls were brimmed at eve, reason presided at the revel, and "the morn never knew of the wine of the night." As a proof of the wise spirit that presided over the young household, we read with pleasure the lines in the "Diary" on the 19th January, 1653:-"This day I paid all my debts, to a farthing. Oh, blessed day!" His sense of the blessing which resided in owing no man anything made him more sure of securing and more worthy of enjoying it. If the same sense possesse i the brain of every man now living, we should have such halcyon days in England as the land never yet saw. That "blessed" condition is, we fear, one ever to be desired and never to be witnessed; and yet, with three-fourths of mankind, its attainment is within their own power. The only truly happy man in society (speaking solely in relation to worldly matters)-is he who starts in life with a determination to owe nothing, and who keeps his word. He who does so has the world at his feet and therewith an untroubled mind, enabling him to contemplate the things of God with better chance of comprehending them and profiting thereby. Evelyn's house was emphatically a house where happiness was at home. The young and the gay found gay and youthful consort there: the wise met their fellows: the grave, companion-: ship with gravity: the godly with godliness; the scholar met, in the master of the mansion, with a worthy mate or courteous and skilful adversary; and beauty and virtue encountered in the mistress as much of either as they could bring, and found in her something additional challenging their admiration above all, there dwelt that high, unspotted, Christian charity, which Paul so loved, because Christ had so