John Evelyn

“ In a word, we were wanton, mad, and surfeiting with prosperity; every moment unsettling the old foundations, and never constant to anything. The Lord in mercy avert the sad omen, and that we do not provoke him till he bear it no longer!
This summer did we suffer twenty French men-of-war to pass our Channel toward the Sound, to help the Danes against the Swedes, who had abandoned the French interest, we not having ready sufficient to guard our coasts, or take cognizance of what they did; though the nation never had more, or a better navy, yet the sea had never so slender a fleet. ”

“ So as not only a Diadem binds your sacred Temples this day; but you have even crown’d all your Subjects too; so has your auspicious presence gilded all things; our Churches, Tribunals, Theaters, Palaces, lift up their heads again; the very fields do laugh and exalt. O happy, and blessed spring! not so glorious yet with the pride and enamel of his flowers, the golden corn, and the gemms of the pregnant Vine, as with those Lillies and Roses which bloom and flourish in your Chaplet this day, to which not only these, but even all the productions of nature seem to bend, and pay their homage. ”

“ Hard Case to blame the Ladies Washes, When Men are come to mend their Faces. Yet some there are such Women grown, They cann't be by their Faces known: Some wou'd be like the fair Adonis; Some would be Hyacinthus Cronies; And then they study wanton use Of Spanish Red, and white Ceruse; The only Painters to the Life, That seem with Natures self at strife; As if she only the dead Colours laid, But they the Picture perfect made. What Zeuxis dare provoke these Elves, That to out-doe him paint themselves? For tho' the Birds his painted Grapes did crave, These paint and all Mankind deceive. ”

“ I do only wish (upon the prospect, and meditation of the universal benefit) that every person whatsoever, worth ten pounds per annum, within Her Majesty’s dominions, were by some indispensible statute, obliged to plant his hedge-rows with the best and most useful kinds of them; especially in such places of the nation, as being the more in-land counties, and remote from the seas and navigable rivers, might the better be excus’d from the planting of timber, to the proportion of those who are more happily and commodiously situated for the transportation of it. ”

“ In January, Signor Molino was chosen Doge of Venice, but the extreme snow that fell, and the cold, hindered my going to see the solemnity, so as I stirred not from Padua till Shrovetide, when all the world repair to Venice, to see the folly and madness of the Carnival; the women, men, and persons of all conditions disguising themselves in antique dresses, with extravagant music and a thousand gambols, traversing the streets from house to house, all places being then accessible and free to enter. Abroad, they fling eggs filled with sweet water, but sometimes not over-sweet. ”

“ Is it not as perspicuous as the Sun, that it lies in your power to reform his Counsell, introduce your selves, make what composition you can desire, have all the security that mortall men can imagine, and the greatest Princes of Europe to engage in the performance? This were becoming worthy men, and honourable indeed; this ingenuous self-denyall: And it is no disgrace to reforme a mistake, but to persist in it lyes the shame. The whole Nation require it of you, and the lawes of God command it, you cannot, you must not deferr it. ”

“ To you who are the Shepherds of Israel, and Rulers, who reside for the great God of the whole World, in the Citie of Smyrna, which is Mother in Israel, to her Princes, her Priests, her Judges, and especially to the perfect wise men, and of great experience, may the Lord God cause you to live before him, and delight in the multitude of Peace, Amen, so be the will of the Lord. ”

“ Charles Spencer, a youth of extraordinary hopes, very learned for his age, and ingenious, and under a governor of great worth. Happy were it, could as much be said of the elder brother, the Lord Spencer, who, rambling about the world, dishonors both his name and his family, adding sorrow to sorrow to a mother, who has taken all imaginable care of his education. There is a daughter very young married to the Earl of Clancarty, who has a great and fair estate in Ireland, but who yet gives no great presage of worth,—so universally contaminated is the youth of this corrupt and abandoned age! ”

“ In the dull days of autumn and winter, when the heavy, damp air wafted inwards from the sea shrouds London with a dirty pall of fog thickened and discoloured with the smoke belched forth skywards from the long throats of thousands of tall factory chimneys and emitted from hundreds of thousands of household and workshop fires, the dweller in this vast overgrown city is tempted to range himself for the moment among the belauders of better times in the past. ”