_By Leigh Hunt, Esq._

These volumes exhibit a lively picture of the gayest and most profligate
periods of the history of the English Court. The writer, Sir Ralph Esher,
is an adventurer in the Court of our Second Charles, where he is
introduced by luckily securing a feather that escapes from the hat of one
of the ladies of the Court on horseback. The work opens with some account
of the writer's family, of some antiquity, in the county of Surrey, with a
few delightful sketches of the great men of the period. Witness this
slight outline of

_Cowley._

"I rode one day on purpose to see Cooper's Hill, because Mr. Denham had
written a poem upon it; and hearing that Cowley was coming to see Mr.
Evelyn at Wootton, I went there and waited all the morning, till I saw him
arrive. He had a book in his hand, with his finger between the leaves, as
if he had been reading. He was a fleshy, heavy man, not looking in good
health, and had something of a stare in his eye. Before he entered the
gate, he stooped down to pinch the cheeks of some little children at play;
and afterwards, when I heard he was put in prison, I could not, for the
life of me, persuade myself that he deserved it."

The third chapter describes one of Charles's visits to Durdans, a rural
retreat built with materials from Nonsuch in the vicinity. The opening has
all the summer freshness of a race-day morning at Epsom:

"The bells awoke me in the morning, ringing a merry peal. When the wind
died, they seemed to be calling towards London; when it rose again, they
poured their merriment through the town, as if telling us that the King