The result was that a century and a half later Isaac Disraeli 

 remarked : " Inquire at the Admiralty how the fleets of Nelson were 

 constructed, and they will tell you that it was with the oaks that 

 the genius of Evelyn planted." 



Sir William Temple, had he no other claim to attention, would 

 command it as the patron of Swift, who for years was his secretary : 

 and also as the husband of Dorothy Osborne, whose charming 

 letters to him during a long courtship are universally admired. 



My object in this book is primarily to write about the gardens 

 I have painted, but I desire also to interest the reader in the men 

 and women who made, or owned, and in many cases, loved them. 

 Therefore, I claim the right to be discursive at times, and occasion- 

 ally to dwell upon events apparently irrelevant, and if I should 

 linger longer than may seem necessary over the early history of 

 Sir William Temple and Dorothy Osborne, his wife, it is because, 

 as a horticulturist, he comes legitimately into my scheme, and 

 also because never was there a more chequered and prettier love- 

 story than theirs. In its very opening it is romantic ! Temple, 

 a youth of twenty, and described as a lively, agreeable young man 

 of fashion (fresh from Cambridge), son of Sir John Temple, Master 

 of the Rolls in Ireland, who was a follower rather than a keen 

 partisan of Cromwell, sets out upon his travels abroad, in the 

 year before King Charles was brought to the scaffold. 



' On his road to France," says Macaulay, in his fascinating 

 essay, " he fell in with the son and daughter of Sir Peter Osborne. 

 Sir Peter held Guernsey for the King, and the young people were, 

 like their father, warm for the Royalist cause. At an inn where 

 they stopped in the Isle of Wight, the brother amused himself 

 with inscribing on the windows his opinion of the ruling powers. 

 For this instance of ' malignancy ' the whole party were arrested 

 and brought before the governor. The sister, trusting to the 

 tenderness which even in those troublous times scarcely any 

 gentleman of any party failed to show where a woman was con- 

 cerned, took the crime on herself, and was impiediately set at 

 liberty with her fellow-companion." 



The incident made a deep impression upon Temple. He 

 fell in .love with the charming Dorothy (who was accounted a 

 beauty), and whose vivacity and sweetness are shown in her 

 letters. Although she~ reciprocated his feeling and accepted his 



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