been busily engaged in cutting them down,
nobody had been replacing the loss by
planting. It was even feared, so great
was the scarcity of oak, that the country
might, in the event of a foreign war, find
itself without timber for the construction
of a navy.

But, whenever a great work has to be
done, a man is found to do it. And so it
happened in this case. The hour came, and the
man came along with it; not in the shape of
a great and despotic king, emperor, or
conqueror, whom to hear was to obey; not in
the shape of a parliament or a legislature to
frame a law and compel obedience to it;
but in the shape of a quiet, studious,
philosophic country gentleman, with a book in
his hand, of which the facts and the logic
were sufficient to convince the nation that
a very important duty had been too long
overlooked. The remedy followed speedily
upon the public appreciation of the evil.
The wealthy English landlords set vigorously
to work in the systematic plantation
of trees, especially of oak, and many a
noble tree now standing in many a beautiful
park and avenue, and many a shady elm
by the roadside and in the green lanes of
England, owes its propagation to the taste
thus evoked. The country gentleman, who
had sense and patriotism enough to lead
his countrymen to devote themselves to
this useful and elegant pursuit, was John
Evelyn, of Sayes Court, near Deptford;
and the book was Sylva, or a Discourse on
Forest Trees and the Propagation of
Timber in His Majesty's Dominions. The
volume had been previously read before
the Royal Society, of which the author was
a prominent member, and had been
suggested by certain inquiries addressed to
that learned body by the Commissioners of
the Navy. The manuscript was read before
the society in October, 1662, and was
ordered to be printed at its cost, being
the first book that ever received such an
honour at its hands.

Before speaking further of the contents
of a volume that was destined in due time
to do so nmch to improve the face of Merry
England, a short account of the amiable
author may prove interesting to a generation
that knows little of him but his name.
He was born at Wotton, near Dorking, in
Surrey, and was the second of the three
sons of Richard Evelyn of that place; a
country gentleman with a rental of about
four thousand pounds a year, which was
equivalent in that day to a rental of about
ten thousand pounds in our own. John
Evelyn and his elder brother George, who
ultimately succeeded to the patrimonial
estate, studied together at Oxford. On
leaving the university, they both entered
themselves as students of the Middle
Temple, not so much with the view of
making law their profession as of obtaining
the social position of barristers in
addition to that of country gentlemen. Neither
of the brothers appears to have had much
relish for law, nor to have attained any
proficiency in it. After the death of Richard
Evelyn from dropsy, in 1641, George
betook himself to Wotton, and John made
a tour on the Continent, and served for
a short time as a volunteer in the king's
army in Flanders. Returning home
towards the end of the year, he went to live
at Wotton with his brother, to whom he
was much attached, making occasional
visits to London, where he relates that he
"studied a little; but danced and fooled a
great deal more." With the design, it
would appear, of avoiding all part in the
political troubles of the times, he retired once
more to the Continent in 1643, and spent his
time in travelling through Belgium, France,
and Italy, noting every thing that was note-
worthy, and storing his mind with
knowledge of pictures, architecture, and natural
history, as well as of men and manners.
In the year 1647, he arrived in Paris, where
he made the acquaintance of the British
ambassador, Sir Richard Browne, "with
whose lady and family," he says in his
diary, "I contracted a great friendship,
and particularly set my affections on his
daughter." Mary Browne was very young
at the time, being only just turned fifteen.
Evelyn appears to have thriven well in his
wooing, for he records in his diary, just
thirty- six days after his first mention of
the young lady, that he was married to her
in the chapel of the embassy, by Dr. Earle,
chaplain to the Prince of Wales.

Recalled to England by the state of his
private affairs, which required his attention,
as he had been well provided for by his
father's will, he left his juvenile wife behind
him with her father and mother, and did not
rejoin her till a year and a half had elapsed.
Among the very first places which he visited
on his return to England, was Sayes Court,
Deptford, the country house of Sir Richard
Browne, which he afterwards inherited in
right of his wife, and where, during a long
and happy life, he indulged himself in those
favourite pursuits of gardening and planting,
which enabled him to write like a
master of the art, and to produce a book