kind, so freindly reception of mee in your Tusculanum, that I had some little wonder upon mee when I saw you making excuses that it was no better. Sr I came to see you and your lady, and am highly pleased that I did so, & found all your circumstances to be an heape & union of blessings. But I have not either so great a fancy & opinion of the prettinesse of your aboad, or so low an opinion of your prudence & piety, as to thinke you can be any wayes transported with them. I know the pleasure of them is gone off from their height before one moneths possession ; & that strangers & seldome seers feele the beauty of them more than you who dwell with them. I am pleased indeed at the order & the cleanenesse of all your outward things; and look upon you not onely as a person by way of thankfulnesse to God for his mercies & goodnesse to you, specially obliged to a greater measure of piety, but also as one who being freed in great degrees from secular cares & impediments can without excuse & allay, wholly intend what you so passionately desire, the service of God. But now I am considering yours, & enumerating my owne pleasures, I cannot but adde that though I could not choose but be delighted by seeing all about you, yet my delices were really in seeing you severe & unconcerned in these things, and now in finding your affections wholly a stranger to them, & to communicate with them no portions of your passion but such as is necessary to him that uses them or receives their ministeries.'-pp. 164, 165. Jeremy Taylor did not judge lightly when he pronounced Evelyn's circumstances to be an union of blessings. The language in which Cowley addressed him did not overstep the strict bounds of truth. 'Happy art thou whom God does bless With the full choice of thine own happiness; In books and gardens thou hast placed aright Thy noble innocent delight; And in thy virtuous wife, where thou again dost meet The fairest garden in her looks, And in her mind the wisest books.' One who knew Mrs. Evelyn well describes her as 'the best daughter and wife, the most tender mother, a desirable neighbour and friend, in all parts of her life.' Her portrait is prefixed to the second volume of these Memoirs, from a pencil-drawing by Nanteuil, taken shortly after her marriage, at the age of fifteen; the countenance is rather handsome than beautiful; but it has an expression of intellect and good nature which is always more attractive than mere beauty, and which retains its charm when beauty has passed away. Early maturity was not in her case followed by early decay she lived with her husband in a state of happiness* no otherwise disturbed than by those afflictions which, coming immediately from the hand of the All-wise and All-merciful disposer of all things, loosen our affections from earth when they are perhaps in danger of striking root there too deeply. From her youth and docility, Evelyn, while in the flower of manhood himself, was enabled to mould her mind to the image of his own; and she became, as Mr. D'Israeli says, (whot was struck by the beauty of Evelyn's character and the singular felicity of his life before these Memoirs brought them more fully before the public,) excellent in the arts her husband loved: she designed the frontispiece to his Lucretius, and was the cultivator of their celebrated garden which served as " an example" of his great work on Forest Trees.' It is certain that she painted well, or Evelyn, who was himself a patron and judge of art, would not have presented to Charles II. a Madonna which she copied in miniature from P. Oliver's painting after Raphael. He says it was wrought with extraordinary pains and judg ment: the king was infinitely pleased with it, and caused it to be placed in his cabinet among his best paintings.' Yet with these accomplishments and with her advantages of person, fortune and situation in life, she was not above the care of cakes, and stilling, and sweetmeats, and such useful things.' 'Women,' she says in one of her letters,' were not born to read authors and censure the learned, to compare lives and judge of virtues, to give rules of morality, and sacrifice to the muses. We are willing to acknowledge all time borrowed from family duties is misspent. The care of children's education, observing a husband's commands, assisting the sick, relieving the poor, and being serviceable to our friends, are of suffi cient weight to employ the most improved capacities among us.' And again she says, Though I have lived under the roof of the learned and in the neighbourhood of science, it has had no other effect on such a temper as mine but that of admiration, and that too but when it is reduced to practice. I confess I am infinitely delighted to meet with in books the achievements of the heroes, with the calmness of philosophers, and with the eloquence of orators: but what charms me irresistibly is to see perfect resignation in the minds of men let whatever happen adverse to them in their fortune that is being knowing and truly wise; it confirms my belief of antiquity, and engages my persuasion of future perfection, without which it were vain to live.' 6 There is one other instance in our literary history of a marriage wherein there was the same disparity of years, and the same nonage on the part of the bride,-it was in the case of Brooke, the author of the Fool of Quality, and that marriage also was a happy one. ↑ See his chapter on the Domestic Life of Genius, in the Literary Character illastrated. Mrs. Evelyn had learnt early to form this just estimate of true greatness. The first persons whom she had been taught to respect and honour were her countrymen who bled in the field and on the scaffold in the defence of their king, or who endured exile and poverty rather than forsake his cause, even when it appeared most hopeless. It was well for her that she had been trained in such a school. For, though happily exempted from the miseries which revolution brings in its train, all her fortitude was needed for her domestic trials. The first and heaviest affliction was the loss of a child-one of those rare and beautiful creatures who seem almost always to be marked for early death, as if they were fitter for heaven than earth, and therefore are removed before the world can sully them. The father thus records his death. : 1658, 27 Jan. After six fits of an ague died my son Richard, 5 years and 3 days old onely, bu at that tender age a prodigy for witt and understanding; for beauty of oody a very angel; for endowment of mind of incredible and rare hopes. To give onely a little taste of some of them, and thereby glory to God: at 2 years and a halfe old he could perfectly reade any of ye English, Latin, French or Gottic letters, pronouncing the 3 first languages exactly. He had before the 5th yeare, or in that yeare, not onely skill to reade most written hands, but to decline all the nouns, conjugate the verbs regular, and most of yo irregular learn'd out Puerilis, got by heart almost ye entire vocabularie of Latine and French primitives and words, could make congruous syntax, turne English into Latin, and vice versa, construe and prove what he read, and did the government and use of relatives, verbs, substances, elipses, and many figures and tropes, and made a considerable progress in Comenius's Janua; began himselfe to write legibly, and had a strong passion for Greeke. The number of verses he could recite was prodigious, and what he remember'd of the parts of playes, which he would also act; and when seeing a Plautus in one's hand, he ask'd what booke it was, and being told it was comedy, and too difficult for him, he wept for sorrow. Strange was his apt and ingenious application of fables and morals, for he had read sop; he had a wonderful disposition to mathematics, having by heart divers propositions of Euclid that were read to him in play, and he would make lines and demonstrate them. As to his piety, astonishing were his applications of Scripture upon occasion, and his sense of God; he had learn'd all his Catechisme early, and understood ye historical part of ye Bible and New Testament to a wonder, how Christ came to redeeme mankind, and how, comprehending these necessarys himselfe, his godfathers were discharg'd of their promise. These and the like illuminations far exceeding his age and experience, considering the prettinesse of his addresse and behaviour, cannot but leave impressions in me at the memory of him. When one told him how many dayes a Quaker had fasted, he replied that was no wonder, for Christ had said man should not live by bread alone, but by ye Word of God. He would of himselfe select ye most pathetic psalms, and chapters out of Job, to reade to his mayde during his sicknesse, telling her when she pitied him that all God's children must suffer affliction. He declaim'd against ye vanities of ye world before he had seene any. Often he would desire those who came to see him to pray by him, and a yeare before he fell sick, to kneel and pray with him alone in some corner. How thankfully would he receive admonition! how soone be reconcil'd! how indifferent, yet continually cherefull! He would give grave advice to his brother John, beare with his impertinencies, and say he was but a child. If he heard of or saw any new thing he was unquiet till he was told how it was made; he brought to us all such difficulties as he found in books to be expounded. He had learn'd by heart divers sentences in Latin and Greeke, which on occasion he would produce even to wonder. He was all life, all prettinesse, far from morose, sullen, or childish in any thing he said or did. The last time he had ben at church (wch was at Greenwich), I ask'd him, according to costome, what he remembered of ye sermon; two good things, father, said he, bonum gratiæ and bonum gloriæ, with a just account of what ye preacher said. The day before he died he cal'd to me, and in a more serious manner than usual told me that for all I loved him so dearly I should give my house, land, and all my fine things, to his brother Jack, he should have none of them; and next morning, when he found himself ill, and that I persuaded him to keepe his hands in bed, he demanded whether he might pray to God with his hands un-joyn'd: and a little after, whilst in greate agonie, whether he should not offend God by using his holy name so often calling for ease. What shall I say of his frequent pathetical ejaculations utter'd of himselse; Sweete Jesus save me, deliver me, pardon my sinns,let thine angels receive me! So early knowledge, so much piety and perfection! But thus God having dress'd up a Saint fit for himselfe, would not longer permit him with us, unworthy of ye future fruites of this incomparable hopefull blossome. Such a child I never saw! for such a child I blesse God in whose bosome he is! May I and mine become as this little child which now follows the child Jesus that Lamb of God in a white robe whithersoever He goes; Even so, Lord Jesus, fiat voluntas tua! Thou gavest him to us, Thou hast taken him from us, blessed be ye name of ye Lord! that I had any thing acceptable to Thee was from thy grace alone, since from me he had nothing but sin, but that Thou hast pardon'd! blessed be my God for ever, amen!'-vol. i. pp. 229301. The letter in which Mr. Evelyn communicated this event to his father-in-law is not less affecting. By the reverse of this Medall, you will perceive how much reason I had to be affraid of my Felicity, and how greately it did import me to do all that I could to prevent what I have apprehended, what I deserved, and what now I feele. God has taken from us that deare Childe, y Grandson, your Godson, and with him all the joy and satisfaction that could be derived from the greatest hopes. A losse, so much the more to be deplored, as our contentments were extraordinary and the indications of his future perfections as faire & legible as, yet, I ever saw, or read off in one so very young: You have, Sir, heard so much of this, that I may say it with the lesse crime & suspicion. And indeede his whole life was from the beginning so greate a miracle, that it were hard to exceede in the description of it, and which I should here yet attempt, by sum'ing up all the prodigies of it, and what a child at 5 yeares old (for he was little more) is capable off, had I not given you so many minute and particular accounts of it, by several expresses, when I then mentioned those things with the greatest joy, which now I write with as much sorrow and amasement. But so it is, that it has pleased God to dispose of him, and that Blossome (Fruit, rather I may say) is fallen; a six days Quotidian having deprived us of him; an accident that has made so greate a breach in all my contentments, as I do never hope to see repaired: because we are not in this life to be fed with wonders and that I know you will hardly be able to support the affliction & the losse, who beare so greate a part in every thing that concernes me. But thus we must be reduced when God sees good, and I submitt; since I had, therefore, this blessing for a punishment, & that I might feele the effects of my great unworthynesse. But I have begged of God that I might pay the fine heare, and if to such belonged the kingdome of heaven, I have one depositum there. Dominus dedit Dominus abstulit: blessed be his name: since without that consideration it were impossible to support it: for the stroke is so severe, that I find nothing in all Philosophy capable to allay the impression of it, beyond that of cutting the channell and dividing with our friends, who really sigh on our behalfe, and mingle with our greater sorrows in accents of piety and compassion, which is all that can yet any ways alleviate the sadnesse of Deare Sir, Yr &c. : Says-Court, 14 Feb: 1657-8.'-vol. ii. p. 175. The next entry in his journal, and at no longer an interval than nineteen days, records the death of another and younger son, the afflicting hand of God being upon us.' It was fortunate for Evelyn that public affairs were at this time in a critical state, and must in some measure have abstracted him from the sense of his afflictions. Cromwell was then paying the penalty of his usurpation. The fanatical flatterers by whom he was surrounded perhaps prevented him from feeling any remorse for the evil which he had done, but they could not take from him the stinging consciousness that he had done none of the good which it had once been his intention and desire to do,-that, contrary to his principles and wishes, a severer ecclesiastical tyranny had been established than Laud had ever attempted to enforce, and that the republicans who, while they conferred upon him more than kingly power, would not suffer him to take the title of king, would, by their follies, extravagancies, and inevitable dissentions, bring about the restoration of the royal family, before he should have mouldered in the grave, to which grief and constant anxiety, and the sense of perpetual insecurity, |