The Diary Of John Evelyn Vol-2

1677 JOHN EVELYN

blue slate, yet there is room enough for a full court, the
offices and outhouses being1 so ample and well disposed.
The King's apartment is painted h fresco^ and magnifi-
cently furnished. There are many excellent pictures of
the great masters. The gallery is a pleasant, noble
room; in the break, or middle, is a billiard table, but
the wainscot, being of fir, and painted, does not please
me so well as Spanish oak without paint. The chapel is
pretty, the porch descending to the gardens. The orange
garden is very fine, and leads into the greenhouse, at
the end of which is a hall to eat in, and the conserva-
tory some hundred feet long, adorned with maps, as the
other side is with the heads of the Caesars, ill cut in
alabaster; above are several apartments for my Lord,
Lady, and Duchess, with kitchens and other offices be-
low, in a lesser form; lodgings for servants, all distinct
for them to retire to when they please and would be in
private, and have no communication with the palace,
which he tells me he will wholly resign to his son-in-
law and daughter, that charming young creature.

The canal running under my Lady's dressing room
chamber window, is full of carps and fowl, which come
and are fed there. The cascade at the end of the canal
turns a cornmill that provides the family, and raises
water for the fountains and offices. To pass this canal
into the opposite meadows, Sir Samuel Morland has in-
vented a screw bridge, which, being turned with a key,
lands you fifty feet distant at the entrance of an ascend-
ing walk of trees, a mile in length,— as it is also on the
front into the park,—of four rows of ash trees, and reaches
to the park pale, which is nine miles in compass, and the
best for riding and meeting the game that I ever saw.
There were now of red and fallow deer almost a thou-
sand, with good covert, but the soil barren and flying
sand, in which nothing will grow kindly. The tufts of
fir, and much of the other wood, were planted by my di-
rection some years before. This seat is admirably
placed for field sports, hawking, hunting, or racing.
The mutton is small, but sweet. The stables hold thirty
horses and four coaches. The out-offices make two large
quadrangles, so as servants never lived with more ease
and convenience; never master more civil. Strangers
are attended and accommodated as at their home, in brick, and but