SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 191 



was so commonly used for the same purpose, that Evelyn says 

 " it seems as if it had only been destined for hedges." Holly 

 for a garden-hedge he also enthusiastically praises : " Is there 

 under heaven a more glorious and refreshing object of the kind 

 than an impregnable hedge of about 480 feet length, 9 feet high, 

 and 5 feet in diameter, which I can show in my now ruined 

 gardens at Says Court (thanks to the Czar of Muscovy) any time 

 of year, glittering with its armed and varnished leaves." This 

 is quoted from the later edition of the Silva, and the " ruin " 

 of the garden refers to the damage done there by Peter the 

 Great, who lived at Sayes Court to be near Deptford during his 

 visit to England (1698). He is said to have amused himself by 

 being wheeled about the garden in a wheel-barrow, over borders 

 and through hedges, regardless of consequences. In his Diary, 

 on June 8th, 1698, Evelyn writes : " I went to Deptford to see 

 how miserably the Czar had left my house after three months 

 making it his Court. I got Sr. Christr. Wren, the K.'s surveyor, 

 and Mr. London, his gardener, to go and estimate the repairs, 

 for which they allowed 150 in their report to the Lords of 

 the Treasury." 



Besides the interest he took in his own garden, Evelyn 

 helped to lay out others. The family seat of the Evelyns, 

 Wotton, in Surrey, he says, was one of " the most magnificent 

 that England afforded, and which indeed gave one of the finest 

 examples to that elegancy since so much in vogue." He, 

 however, helped his brother to carry out various alterations in 

 1652. With much deference to so distinguished a gardener as 

 Evelyn, at this distance of time we may be allowed to doubt 

 if all his alterations were improvements. There was a " mount " 

 or " mountaine," and a moat within ten yards of the house. 

 This was taken away by " digging down the mountaine and 

 flinging it into a rapid streame . . . filling up the moat, and 

 levelling that noble area where now the garden and fountain is." 

 In 1658 he went "to Alburie (Albury, near Guildford) to see 

 how that garden proceeded, which I found exactly don to the 

 designe and plot I had made, with the crypta thro' the mountain 

 in the park 30 perches in length, such a Pausilippe is no where 

 in England besides. The Canall was now digging and the 



