through Holland and Flanders, during which he availed himself of every opportunity of gratifying his taste for pictures, gardens, and works of art. After an absence of about three months, he landed at Dover on the 12th of October, and returned to his chambers in the Middle Temple.

For more than a year, he appears to have been unsettled as to his residence; and when in London, he describes himself as "studying a little, but dancing and fooling more." Occasionally he visited his relatives in the country; sometimes he went to observe the progress of the armies; and on one occasion we find him going out with the intention of joining the king's army at Brentford. Arriving, however, too late for the battle, he gave up all further thoughts of a military life, considering that his brother's, as well as his own estates, were so near London as to be fully in the power of the Parliament.

In the summer of 1643 he retired to his brother's house at Wotton. "Resolving," he says, "to possess myself in some quiet if it might be, in a time of so great jealousy, I built by my brother's permission a study, made a fish-pond and island, and some other solitudes and retirements, which gave the first occasion of improving them to those waterworks and gardens which afterwards succeeded them." But even there he was

not suffered to reside in peace. He was frequently obliged to absent himself from home, in order to escape being pressed to take the solemn league and covenant; and at length, "finding it impossible to evade the doing very unhandsome things," he obtained from the king a licence to travel, and set out for a longer journey than the last, accompanied by Mr. Thicknesse, his fellow collegian, and "very dear friend."

In those days, as well as the present, many of the young

nobility and gentry travelled on the continent for the professed purpose of completing their education. Too often, however, those tours were productive of evil effects, being spent in vicious indulgence, and only sending the youthful travellers home insolent, ignorant, and debauched. "The ordinary commerce and import of their wild pererrations," as Evelyn expresses it, was "the vanity of talk, feather, and ribbon." "But it is not enough," he says, "that a person of quality be taught to dance and to ride, to speak languages, and wear his clothes with a good grace, (which are the very shells of travel,) but besides all these, that he know men, customs, courts, and disciplines, and whatsoever superior excellences the places afford, befitting a person of birth and noble impressions. This is the fruit of travel; thus our incomparable Sydney was bred; and this sets the crown upon his perfections, when a gallant man shall return with religion and courage, knowledge and modesty, with-out pedantry, without affectation, material and serious, to the contentment of his relations, the glory of his family, the star and ornament of his age. This is truly to give a citizen to his country." Mr. Evelyn's journal evinces that his pursuits abroad were of such a character as he in later life recommended for the young lord Percy, in the letter which furnishes the foregoing extract.

He employed about three years in his tours through France, Italy, and Switzerland, but we must confine ourselves to a very brief notice of his journey and residence abroad. In the month of November 1643, he landed at Calais, with his friend, and arrived in Paris not many days after. That metropolis was his principal place of residence till the following spring, when he made an excursion into Normandy. Leaving Paris again in April 1644, he travelled as far as Tours, where he remained about four

months, and took an opportunity of" studying the tongue very diligently." In September he proceeded to Marseilles, seeing all that was worthy of note 'by the way; and there embarked for Genoa, at which place he arrived about the middle of October, after having narrowly escaped shipwreck in doubling the point of Savona. Passing through Pisa, Leghorn, and Florence, he arrived next month at Rome, where he spent the winter in seeing all the antiquities and curiosities of that famous city. During this interval he visited Mount Vesuvius and Naples. The latter place was the limit of his travels, being, as he says, "sufficiently sated with rolling up and down, and resolving within myself to be no longer a wanderer if ever I got home again, since from the report of divers experienced and curious persons I had been assured there was little more to be seen in the rest of the civil world, after Italy, France, Flanders, and the Low Country, but plain and prodigious barbarism."

On the 18th of May 1645, he finally left Rome, returned once more to Florence, and thence proceeded to Venice. There he found a ship bound for the Holy Land, and "had resolved to embark, intending to see Jerusalem, and other parts of Syria, Egypt, and Turkey," but after he had laid in his sea-stock the vessel was "pressed for the service of the State, which," he says, "altogether frustrated my design, to my great mortification." In June he went to Padua, for the purpose of studying in that distinguished university; and between that place and Venice he passed the following winter. In September, he notes, that Mr. Thicknesse, his dear friend, and till now constant fellow-traveller, was obliged to return to England " upon his particular concern;" but he had several English acquaintances, and especially Mr. Henshaw, with whom he passed "many bright and

happy moments-in viewing and contemplating the entertainments of travellers who go not abroad to count steeples, but to improve themselves."

Taking leave of his friends at Venice and Padua in March 1646, he set out on his return to Paris, in company with Waller the poet and two other gentlemen, and saw in succession whatever was worthy of observation at Vicenza, Verona, and Milan; crossed the Alps with great fatigue and considerable danger; and arrived at Geneva, where he was detained for several weeks by a severe attack of small-pox. Having sufficiently recovered his strength, he returned to Paris, in July 1646, "rejoiced that after so many disasters and accidents in a tedious peregrination, I was gotten so near home; and here I resolved to rest myself before I went further."

When he wrote this, he had fresh in his memory not only the fatigue of travelling, but those interruptions of health which he had experienced at Geneva, and shortly before at Padua, and hence we can account for these expressions of dissatisfaction. But his tour had been on the whole highly agreeable. He had made progress in his favourite study of natural philosophy; examined many ingenious productions of art; made himself better acquainted with modern languages; heard much delightful music, and learned to play a little upon a kind of lute called the theorbo; had visited some very choice collections of paintings, and learned and practised drawing; inspected with particular satisfaction the palaces and villas, the gardens, grottoes, and fountains, in the several places through which he passed; and had taken much "agreeable toil among ruins and antiquities, and in viewing the cabinets and curiosities of the virtuosi." He had also gladly availed himself of the opportunities which offered for becoming acquainted with such eminent foreigners as

were distinguished for their attainments in the several branches of literature and science.

After having taken up his abode for the winter in Paris, he speaks of the early part of that season as "the only time that in his whole life he spent most idly, tempted from his more profitable recesses; but I soon," he says, "recovered my better resolutions and fell to my study, learning the High Dutch and Spanish tongues, and now and then refreshing my dancing and such exercises as I had long omitted." He also attended a 66 course of chemistry," and learned to play upon the lute, "though to small perfection."

66

During this residence in Paris, he became intimate with the family of sir Richard Browne, the British ambassador at the court of France, to whose only daughter he paid his addresses, and was married on the 27th of June 1647. This lady was then of very tender years, and Mr. Evelyn subsequently took great pains in directing her studies and forming her character. Even in her old age, the kindness which had been evinced by him at this period was gratefully remembered; "His care of my education," she says, was such as might become a father, a lover, a friend, and husband, for instruction, tenderness, affection, and fidelity, 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." Nor was all this attention ill bestowed. Her disposition was congenial with his own, and she had an enlightened mind. According to the account of Dr. Bohun, a friend of the family and his frequent correspondent, she proved to be "the best daughter and wife, the most tender mother, and desirable neighbour and friend,

- to the