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'As shines the moon in clouded skies,
She in her poor attire was seen :
One praised her ancles, one ber eyes,

One her dark hair and lovesome mien.'

The beauty which poverty and rags could not vail, she was obliged to subject to an eclipse; and adjusting an artificial hump on her shoulder, she dressed her little princess as a beggar-boy, and thus disfigured and disguised escaped without detection; and

through the guards, the river, and the sea,

Faith, Beauty, Wit, and Courage made their way.

The fair company thus revealed to the poet's eye, to the common wayfarer appeared only in the guise of a deformed French beggarwoman, with her little boy Pierre, whom she carried on her back as she walked bravely along to Dover; the child, much to her alarm, though scarcely less to her amusement, indignantly repudiating the the character she was compelled to assume, and declaring to all they met that she was a Princess, and not Pierre, the beggar-boy.

Happily her royal highness's explanations were not very intelligible, and her pronunciation of princess so closely resembled the name bestowed on her by her guardian (who had indeed selected it for that reason), that they were allowed to pursue their way unmolested, until, arrived in France, their dangers were over, and the Princess resumed her rank, and Lady Morton her beauty. Proceeding to Paris, the one was received into the rapturous embraces of her mother, the other found herself the object of praise and admiration for her noble daring and devoted fidelity. Sir Thomas Berkeley sought her hand, and it is said never forgave Clarendon, (who had a great friendship for her, and by whose advice she acted,) for her rejection of his suit. Waller sung her praises in an ode`presented by him to the Queen at the Louvre, on New Year's Day, 1647, in which he thus addressed her:

But thus to style you fair, your sex's praise,
Gives you but myrtle who may challenge bays
From armed foes to bring a royal prize
Shows your brave heart victorious as your eyes.
If Judith, marching with the general's head,
Can give us passion when her story's read,
What may the living do, which brought away
Though a less bloody, but a nobler prey-
Who from our flaming Troy, with a bold hand,
Snatch'd her fair charge, the princess, like a brand?--
A brand preserved to warm some prince's heart,
And make whole kingdoms take her brother's part.

Waller, who, having 'praised some whom he would have been afraid to marry,' was now 'married to one whom he would have been ashamed to praise,' lived on terms of great intimacy with the

Evelyns; and to one of his children Mrs. Evelyn stood sponsor. But her little god-daughter did not long survive, either to follow her example or to need her cares. She died in her infancy, and was brought from St. Germain, where her parents were residing, to Paris, that she might be buried with the religious rites of the Church of England.

Christenings in those days were expensive ceremonies to all concerned in them. Evelyn records how, when last in England, he stood godfather to a little niece, on whom he bestowed the same name as that borne by his wife, Mary, and presented to the child a piece of plate of the value of £18, with an elaborate Latin inscription of his own composition engraved on it. Again in Paris, he relates how Sir Hugh Rilie, being too poor to provide sponsors for his child, he and other friends drew lots who should offer themselves for that office. We may remember, too, how the thrifty Pepys, putting the spoons in his pocket that he designed as a present for his godchild, brought them home again, well pleased at having escaped the compliment, and the expense it entailed, of being requested to name the child at the font.

[In 1650, Evelyn again crossed to England, but returned to France after a short absence. The battle of Worcester settled the government of the country contrary to his wishes, but he accepted the situation and arranged to take his wife to Sayes Court. On her way she made a visit to Penshurst, and was present at the second nuptials of the Countess of Sutherland.]

Sayes Court.

Amidst broad, flat meadows, stretching toward the banks of the Thames, and shadowed by a few old hollow elms, and a standard holly or two, stood the Manor-house of West Greenwich or Deptford. Sayes Court was so called after the family into whose hands it had passed from those of the Knight on whom it had been bestowed by William the Conqueror. Geoffrey de Say had, in the fervor of crusading zeal, presented it to the Knights Templars; but his descendants, after awhile, resumed the gift. It had for many years been held under the crown by the family of Browne, in whose pasture the cattle, supplied from the remoter provinces for the use of the king's household, were fed.

Never a large estate, it was during the Commonwealth greatly curtailed in its dimensions. The Parliament had left the present owner but sixty acres attached to the dwelling. This was a long, low house, two stories high, with mullioned windows, and pointed

gables. Adjoining it was a small garden; the stables were attached to the house; and near was a barn, constructed entirely of beams of chestnut wood. An old orchard lay on one side, bounded by one of the barn closes. The other meadow, (the whole of the pasture being thus divided,) lay between the barn and a field called Bradmarsh a name ominously suggestive of river-damps. The situation was, however, remarkably warm and dry. The house was much out of repair, and its interior accommodations seem curiously insufficient for a person of Sir Richard Browne's position. In the survey of the manor, before its sale by the Parliament, they are thus described :-'The ground-floor consisted of one hall, one parlor, one kitchen, one buttery, one larder with a dairy-house, also one chamber and three cellars. In the second story, eight chambers, with four closets and three garrets.' The Manor-house, garden, orchard, and court-yards contained together two acres, two roods, sixteen perches.

Such was the home to which Evelyn brought his wife, from Penshurst, in the month of July, 1652, having somewhat inured her, after her long residence on the continent, to the more somber skies, and less facile manners of her native land. But that desolate old mansion, with its ragged borders and gnarled trees, was destined to become the resort of royalty itself; and its name is dear even in the present day to all who 'in trim gardens take their pleasure.' Sayes Court, descending to Mrs. Evelyn by inheritance, was during her father's lifetime given up to her husband. And he, excluded as much by his tastes as by his political principles from public employment, and shrinking from a career of fashionable trifling, followed the bent of his own happy inclinations in devoting himself to the improvement of his estate.

Under his skillful hands the garden became a 'pleasaunce' such as a poet might dream of. Such a one it was, in situation at least, as that sweet scene where dwelt the 'Gardener's Daughter'—

Not wholly in the busy world, nor quite
Beyond it.

To its embelishment were added many of those quaint contrivances which were the fashion of the day, and especial objects of Evelyn's admiration. Labyrinths involved the visitor in puzzling mazes. A perspective lengthened a broad terrace walk. Statues glimmered amongst the laurels, and fountains glittered in the sun. The flower knots blazed with many a choice treasure, the borders were gay with blossoms of homely growth;

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And all the turf was rich in plots, that looked
Each like a garnet or a turkis in it.

To the culture and care of their garden Mrs. Evelyn devoted much attention. Your Flora,' she was designated by one of her husband's classic correspondents. But not for ornamental purposes only it claimed her attention. Damask roses, violets, gilly-flowers, and a thousand other sweets yielded their essences for perfumes, cordials, and conserves in the sacred precincts of the still-room; whilst the plenty, riches, and variety of the sallet-garden' were held by her in high esteem. But the chief glory of the grounds consisted in the trees and choice shrubs planted there by Evelyn, and on which in the 'Sylva' he so lovingly dilates. Here were cedars from Libanus, and mulberries from Languedoc. The arbor vita mingled its somber tints with those of the juniper and cypress that surrounded the grass plots with an impervious barrier. A plane tree spread its broad shade on one hand, on the other the chestnut reared its pyramids of milky bloom. The dark, polished masses of the ilex caught and reflected back cach blink of sunshine, whilst tall hedges of alaternus and philly rea closed in the parterre. Orange trees and myrtles perfumed the summer evenings with their balmy sighs; the crimson flushed pomegranate flourished in the open air; and the jasmine led its snowy wreaths around the stone work of the house: but stately beyond all was seen that 'glorious holly hedge, blushing with its clusters of natural coral' Even when these were wanting, an equivalent might be found in the transparent fruit of the cornelian cherry, or, better still, in a warm grove where a store of mountain ash were springing, ‘of singular beauty,' contrived not only to delight the eye, but to soothe the ear; for thither were multitudes of thrushes attracted by the scarlet berries that decked the boughs.

The house was enlarged, 'elegantly set off with ornaments, and quaint mottoes at most turns.' A study, laboratory, and chapel, besides servants' offices, were added. But the best reception-room, the fairest saloon, was without the walls, carpeted with green turf, and canopied with the blue vault of heaven. For the garden in those days was, as Sir Walter Scott observes, often used as a sort of chapel of ease to the apartments within doors, and afforded opportunities for the society, after the early dinner of our ancestors, to enjoy the evening in the cool fragrance of walks and bowers. Hence the dispersed groups which Watteau and others set forth as perambulating the highly ornamented scenes, which those artists took pleasure in painting.'

They are not, however, exactly Watteau-like figures that we imagine as animating the walks and terraces of the oval garden, which replaced the rude orchard that formerly stretched between the house and meadows. Beneath a tall cypress, shorn into a pyramid, might be seen the noble form of the ejected rector of Uppingham-his calm brow unshadowed by the faintest cloud of gloom as he surveys the signs of affluence and enjoyment that surround him-serenely content under poverty and neglect. Holding in his hand, and gazing upon him with that loving veneration with which children acknowledge the presence of a saint, is a bright-faced boy, intelligent beyond his years: his gleaming eyes, his lip quivering with the eager answer that springs there so readily, the eloquent blood speaking in his cheek, all mark him as one not long destined for an inhabitant of this lower world. By gentle answer, or more subtle query, Dr. Jeremy Taylor draws on his young companion to high and holy themes; all the time, it may be, thinking sadly of a little child of his own-a boy who had lately made him very glad, but for whom he is now in heaviness. Or, shrinking like some delicate exotic from the breath of evening that blows fresh from the river, Robert Boyle may be found pacing beneath the holly hedge with his host, where they converse together on serious thoughts abstruse.' Waiting until their argument is concluded, Mr. P looks round with much outward respect, but with som

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