INTRODUCTION xxiii 



Sir Richard Browne, afterwards his father-in-law, then in 

 charge of British affairs pending the arrival of the Earl of 

 Norwich, who came immediately after that as Ambassador 

 Extraordinary. That Evelyn's purse was fairly well lined the 

 Parisian passages in his Diary distinctly show. He appears 

 to have taken part in many gay excursions and junkettings, 

 though he sometimes reckoned the cost. * At an inn in this 

 village (St. Germains en Lay) is an host who treats all the 

 greate persons in princely lodgings for furniture and plate, 

 but they pay well for it, as I have don. Indeede the enter- 

 tainment is very splendid, and not unreasonable, considering 

 the excellent manner of dressing their meate, and of the 

 service. Here are many debauches and excessive revellings, 

 as being out of all noise and observance.' Wherever he 

 visited the royal gardens and villas, or those of the great 

 nobles and other magnates, he writes rapturously of what 

 he saw. Sometimes, though, his joyous optimism rather 

 leads one to doubt the quality of his taste, as when, writing 

 of Richelieu's villa at Ruell, he says * This leads to the 

 Citroniere, which is a noble conserve of all those rarities ; 

 and at the end of it is the Arch of Constantine, painted on 

 a wall in oyle, as large as the real one at Rome, so well don 

 that even a man skilled in painting may mistake it for stone 

 and sculpture. The skie and hills which seem to be between 

 the arches are so naturall that swallows and other birds, 

 thinking to fly through, have dashed themselves against the 

 wall. I was infinitely taken with this agreeable cheate. ' 

 But he was certainly gradually acquiring the materials which 

 were afterwards to be so well used by him in his great works 

 on gardening. After a tour made in Normandy with Sir 

 John Cotton, a Cambridgeshire knight, he quitted Paris in 

 April, 1644. Marching across by Chartres and Estamps to 

 Orleans, the party of which he formed one had an encounter 

 with brigands, * for no sooner were we entred two or three 

 leagues into ye Forest of Orleans (which extends itself many 

 miles), but the company behind us were set on by rogues, 

 who, shooting from ye hedges and frequent covert, slew 

 fowre upon the spot... I had greate cause to give God 

 thankes for this escape. ' Taking boat, he went down the 

 Loire to St. Dieu, and thence rode to Blois and on to Tours, 



