ted to the late Mr. Upcott, of the London
Institution, who made a complete catalogue of the collection.

One afternoon, as Lady Evelyn and a female companion were seated in
one of the fine old apartments of Wotton, making feather tippets,
her ladyship pleasantly observed to Mr. Upcott, "You may think this
feather-work a strange way of passing time: it is, however, my hobby;
and I dare say you, too, Mr. Upcott, have _your hobby_." The librarian
replied that his favourite pursuit was the collection of the autographs
of eminent persons. Lady Evelyn remarked, that in all probability the
MSS. of "_Sylva_" Evelyn would afford Mr. Upcott some amusement. His
reply may be well imagined. The bell was rung, and a servant desired to
bring the papers from a lumber-room of the old mansion; and from one of
the baskets so produced was brought to light the manuscript Diary of
John Evelyn--one of the most finished specimens of autobiography in the
whole compass of English literature.

The publication of the Diary, with a selection of familiar letters, and
private correspondence, was entrusted to Mr. William Bray, F.S.A.; and
the last sheets of the MS., with a dedication to Lady Evelyn, were
actually in the hands of the printer at the hour of her death. The work
appeared in 1818; and a volume of Miscellaneous Papers, by Evelyn, was
subsequently published, under Mr. Upcott's editorial superintendence.

Wotton House, though situate in the angle of two valleys, is actually on
part of Leith Hill, the rise from thence being very gradual. Evelyn's
"Diary" contains a pen-and-ink sketch of the mansion as it appeared in
1653.

[1] See the Frontispiece.

* * * * *

FAMILIES OF LITERARY MEN.

A _Quarterly_ Reviewer, in discussing an objection to the Copyright Bill
of Mr. Sergeant Talfourd, which was taken by Sir Edward Sugden, gives
some curious particulars of the progeny of literary men. "We are not,"
says the writer, "going to speculate about the causes of the fact; but a
fact it is, that men distinguished for extraordinary intellectual power
of any sort rarely leave more than a very brief line of progeny behind
them. Men of genius have scarcely ever done so; men of imaginative
genius, we might say, almost never. With the one exception of the noble
Surrey, we cannot, at this moment, point out a representative in the
male line, even so far down as the third generation, of any English
poet; and we believe th