y noble house and sweete place, where
he enjoyed the fruite of his labours in greate prosperity. He was
universally belov'd, hospitable, generous, learned in many things,
skill'd in music, a very greate cherisher of learned men of whom he
had the conversation. His library and collection of other
curiosities were of the most considerable, the models of ships
especially.... Mr. Pepys had been for neere 40 years so much my
particular friend, that Mr. Jackson sent me compleat mourning,
desiring me to be one to hold up the pall at his magnificent
obsequies, but my indisposition hindered me from doing him this
last office.

All the teachings of the histories of our student days force us to look
on Charles II. as one of the weakest of English kings; but when we come
to enjoy Pepys and to revere Evelyn, we begin to see that there is much
to be said for him as a monarch, and that he did more for England under
difficult circumstances than conventional history has given him credit
for.

It took many years for me to find any diary or memoir that appealed to
me as much as that of Pepys. His great charm is that he does for you
what formal history never does; he takes you into the heart of his time,
and introduces you into the centre of his mind and heart. In literature,
in poetry and prose, the reader hopes that the roofs of houses or the
tops of heads might be taken off, so that we could see with an
understanding eye what goes on. The interest of the human race, though
it may be disguised rhetorically, is the interest that everybody finds
in gossip. Malicious gossip is one thing; but that gossip that makes us
know our fellow men and women somewhat as we know ourselves--but perhaps
more clearly--can never be rooted out of normal human nature.

I read and re-read favourite parts of Pepys's "Diary" many times, and I
sat myself down in many cozy corners, on hills, on valleys, by land, and
by sea, to dip into the "Memoirs of Saint-Simon"; and then there was
always Madame de S['e]vign['e]. Much was hoped from the long-promised
"Memoirs of Talleyrand." They came; they were disappointing.

Suddenly arrived a very complete and egoistical book that compares in a
way with the perennial favourites of mine I have been writing about. And
this is "The Education of Henry Adams," and almost contemporaneously the
"Letters of William James." It is easy to understand the delight with
which intellige