AND CELEBRATED GARDENS 



Government ; was elected to the new Parliament for Cambridge ; 

 had a seat in the Cabinet that Council within a Council the new 

 Privy Council of thirty, which was his own panacea for the evil 

 he found. But at any moment of difficulty, at a crisis when violent 

 passions were called forth, '* when the whole nation was con- 

 vulsed by party spirit, he told his constituents that he should not 

 again apply for their suffrages, and set off for Sheen, resolving 

 never again to meddle with public affairs." 



Did Lady Temple applaud this conduct ? I wonder ! . Any- 

 way, he held to his resolution, and says Macaulay : " The troubles 

 which agitated the whole country did not reach the quiet orangery 

 in which Temple loitered away several years without once seeing 

 the smoke of London." 



The revolution came, and he remained neutral; but soon he 

 transferred the loyalty which Macaulay stigmatizes as " lukewarm " 

 to the new sovereign, who would only too gladly have made him 

 his Secretary of State, would he have accepted office. " He paid 

 court to William at Windsor, and William dined with him at 

 Sheen." His eldest son died under distressing circumstances, and 

 the family retired from Sheen to Moor Park, at a greater distance 

 from London. There Temple passed the remainder of his life. 

 4 The air agreed with him, the soil was fruitful and well suited 

 to an experimental farmer and gardener. The grounds were laid 

 out with the angular regularity which Sir William had admired 

 in the flower-beds of Haarlem and The Hague. A beautiful rivulet 

 flowing from the hills of Surrey bounded the domain. But a straight 

 canal which, bordered by a terrace, intersected the garden, was 

 probably more admired by the lovers of the picturesque in that 

 age." 



The form of garden which Sir William himself most approved 

 was an oblong on a slope. In his essay upon " The Gardens of 

 Epicurus, or of Gardening in the Year 1685," he says : " But after 

 so much rambling into Ancient Tomes, and Remote Places, to return 

 home and consider the present Way and Humour of our Gardening in 

 England, which seem to have grown into such vogue, and to have 

 been so mightily improved in Three and Four and Twenty years 

 of His Majesty's reign, that perhaps few countries are before us ; 

 either in the Elegance of our Gardens ; or in the number of our 

 Plants, and I believe none equals us in the Variety of Fruits, which 



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