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. 
“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 efter 
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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