with no little pleasure and satisfaction. The materials are worthy, and the dress is clean, and orderly, and beauteous; and I wish that all men in the nation were obliged to read it twice: it is impossible but it must do good to those guilty persons, to whom it is not impossible to repent. Your cha racter' hath a great part of a worthy reward, that it is translated into a language in which it is likely to be read by very many beaux esprits. But that which I promise to myself as an excellent entertainment, is your "Elysium Britannicum." But, Sir, seeing you intend it to the purposes of piety as well as pleasure, why do you not rather call it Paradisus than Elysium; since the word is used by the Hellenish Jews to signify any place of spiritual and immaterial pleasure, and excludes not the material and secular. Sir, I know you are such a curieux, and withal so diligent and inquisitive, that not many things of the delicacy of learning, relating to your subject, can escape you; and therefore it would be great imprudence in me to offer my little mite to your already digested heap. I hope, ere long, to have the honour to wait on you, and to see some parts and steps of your progression; and then if I see I can bring anything to your building, though but hair and sticks, I shall not be wanting in expressing my readiness to serve and to honour you, and to promote such a work, than which I think, in the world, you could not have chosen a more apt and a more ingenious. Sir, I do really bear a share in your fears and your sorrows for your dear boy. I do, and shall pray to God for him; but I know not what to say in such things. If God intends, by these clouds, to convey him and you to brighter graces, and more illustrious glories respectively, I dare not, with too much passion, speak against the so great good of a person that is so dear to me, and a child that is so dear to you. But I hope that God will do what is best: and I humbly beg of him to choose what is that best for you both. As soon as the weather and season of the spring gives leave, I intend, by God's permission, to return to England: and when I come to London with the first to wait on you, for whom I have so great regard, and from whom I have received so many testimonies of a worthy Character of England. See "Miscellaneous Writings," p. 141. friendship, and in whom I know, so much worthiness is deposited. I am, most faithfully and cordially, John Evelyn to Dr. John Wilkins," President of our Society at Gresham College." SIR, 2 Sayes-Court, 17 Feb. 1659-60. Though I suppose it might be a mistake that there was a meeting appointed to-morrow (being a day of public solemnity and devotion), yet because I am uncertain, and would not disobey your commands, I here send you my trifling observations concerning the anatomy of trees, and their vegetative motion. It is certain, as Dr. Goddard has shown, that a section of any tree made parallel to the horizon, will by the closeness of the circles point to the North, and so consequently, if a perpendicular be drawn through them for the meridian, the rest of the cardinals, &c. found out; but this is not so universal, but that where strong reflections are made, as from walls, the warm fumes of dunghills, and especially if the southern side be shaded, &c., those elliptical and hyperbolical circles are sometimes very irregular; and I doubt not but by some art might be made to have their circles as orderly as those which we find in Brasile, Ebene, &c., which, within a very little, concentre by reason of the uniform course of the Sun about them; this being doubtless the cause of their greater dilatation on the south part only with us, when the pores are more open, and less constipated. The consideration whereof (though nowhere mentioned that I know) made the poet, giving advice concerning transplantations, to caution thus, Quin etiam Cali regionem in cortice signant, Ut quo quæque modo steterit, qua parte calores Austrinos tulerit, quæ terga obverterit axi, Restituant: adeo in teneris consuescere multum est. 1 So described by Evelyn; and see Diary, vol. i. pp. 305, 306. In his "Observations concerning the nature and similar parts of a Tree," which were afterwards published in folio, 1664. Dr. Jonathan Goddard was an eminent Physician, Botanist, and promoter of the Royal Society. He was born at Greenwich about 1617, and died in 1674. VOL. III. K And though Pliny neglect it as an unnecessary curiosity, I can by much experience confirm it, that not one tree in 100 would miscarry were it duly observed; for in some I have made trial of it even at Midsummer. But what I would add is touching the grain of many woods, and the reason of it, which I take to be the descent, as well as the ascent of moisture; for what else becomes of that water which is frequently found in the cavities where many branches spread themselves at the tops of great trees, especially pollards, unless (according to its natural appetite) it sink into the very body of the stem through the pores ?. For example: in the Walnut, you shall find, when 'tis old, that the wood is rarely figured and marbled as it were, and therefore much more esteemed by joiners, &c., than the young, which is whiter and without any grains: for the rain distilling along the branches, where many of them come out in clusters together from the stem, sinks in, and is the cause of these marks; for it is exceedingly full of pores. Do but plane a thin chip off from one of these old trees, and interpose it 'twixt your eye and the light, and you shall perceive it full of innumerable holes. But above all conspicuous for these works and damaskings, is the Maple (a finer sort whereof the Germans call Air, and therefore much sought after by the instrument makers): 'tis notorious that this tree is full of branches from the very root to the summit, by reason it bears no considerable fruit. These branches being frequently cut, the head is the more surcharged with them, which, spreading like so many rays from a centre, form that cavity at the top of the stem whence they shoot as contains a good quantity of water every time it rains: this sinking into the pores, as we hinted before, is compelled to divert its course as it passes through the body of the tree, wherever it finds the knot of any of these branches which were cut off from the stem of the tree; because their roots not only deeply penetrate towards the heart, but are likewise of themselves very hard and impervious; and the frequent obliquity of this course of the subsiding waters, by reason of these obstacles, is the cause of those curious and rare undulations and works which we find remarkable in this and other woods, whose branches grow thick from the stem. Sir, I know not whether I have well explain'd my con ception, but such as it is I offer it, and it was your commands I should do so, together with that Treatise or History of Chalcography, as part of the task you have imposed; but with this hope and humble request, that, knowing upon what other subject I was engaged before I had the honour to be elected one of this august Society, I may obtain its indulgence, not to expect many other things from me 'till it be accomplished; rather that you will take all occasions which may contribute to my design. It is there, Sir, that I have at large discoursed of the vegetation of plants, and upon that argument which Sir K. Digby and the rest so long discoursed at our last encounter, but it shall not be so in this paper, which is now at an end, &c. Your, &c. Samuel Hartlib to John Evelyn. HONOURED SIR, 1660. You cannot believe how welcome and obliging your last of February 4th was yesterday unto me. Mr. Poleman is a man of great and real worth. He is about another edition of his Novum Lumen Medicum: as soon as it is published I shall not fail to give you due notice of it. Here I present you with the model of the Christian Society really begun in Germany: but the cursed Bohemian wars did destroy so noble and Christian a design, as likewise the Protestant nunnery in Silesia founded by Schonaich. Campanilla in his Tract De Subjugandis Belgis is said to assert that by the force of schooling and education whole nations may be subdued: children's senses and tempers should certainly be filled with all manner of natural and artificial objects as the truest precognition for all their after-studies, which have been hitherto utterly neglected. By a discourse of the famous German critic Gilhardus Lubinus, which I have published, you will see what a lover I am of such foundations: it contains also discourses for the right improving of children's senses. Dr. Petty, when he was in See Diary, vol. i. p. 826. 1 See Diary, vol. i. p. 379 and vol. ii. pp. 101–104. his flourishing condition in Ireland, had a main design to erect a Glottical College: the contrivance would have been more accurate, I am persuaded, than any that hath been hitherto extant, but now I fear he hath other fish to fry. I know Mr. Beale will also approve your judgment concerning monastic education: he hath begun some essays of this latter subject which were truly excellent. I should be mighty glad to be advertised when those select essays of St. Jerome shall come forth by that reserved hand. Sir, let me adjure you by the universal felicity of mankind to persevere in your worthy intentions to give us a true body (I mean such as you intimate) of Economical Government; and despairing to see it so as it ought to be from others, I most passionately beg it from your own hands, which done, will make me to profess myself for ever, honoured Sir, yours very truly to love and serve you. SAMUEL HARTLIB. John, Lord Mordaunt to John Evelyn. 23rd April, 1661. SIR, I have spoke with his majesty, and he expects your oration' as soon as he has dined. He asked me if it were in Latin, which I resolved: he said he hoped it would not be very long. This I thought fit to intimate to you. I shall dine at Court, at my Lord Steward's, where, if you inquire, you will find your most humble servant, SIR, Thomas Barlow to John Evelyn. MORDAUNT. Queen's College, Orford, June 10, 1661. I received yours, and return my heartiest thanks for that great and undeserved honour you do me, in the MS. you long since sent me. were pleased to You may justly 1 On the occasion of the Coronation of Charles II. It was not an oration but a poctical panegyric, the possible length of which had not unnaturally alarmed the king. See Diary, vol. i. p. 371. |