From it may be discerned twelve or thirteen counties, with part of the sea on the coast of Sussex on a serene day.  The house large and ancient, suitable to those hospitable times, and sweetly environed with delicious streams and venerable woods.

November 3, 1640.  A day never to be mentioned without a curse, began that long, foolish, and fatal Parliament, the beginning of all our sorrows for twenty years after.

January 2, 1641.  We at night followed the hearse to the church at Wotton, where my father was interred, and mingled with the ashes of our mother, his dear wife.  Thus we were bereft of both our parents in a period when we most of all stood in need of their counsel and assistance, especially myself, of a raw and unwary inclination.

II.—­Travels Abroad

May 12, 1641.  I beheld on Tower Hill the fatal stroke which severed the wisest head in England from the shoulders of the Earl of Strafford, whose crime coming under the cognisance of no human law, a new one was made to his destruction—­to such exorbitancy were things arrived.

July 21.  Having procured a pass at the custom-house, embarked in a Dutch frigate bound for Flushing, convoyed by five other stout vessels, whereof one was a man-of-war.

April 19, 1644.  Set out from Paris for Orleans.  The way, as indeed most of the roads in France, is paved with a small square freestone, so that there is little dirt and bad roads, as in England, only it is somewhat hard to the poor horses’ feet.

October 7.  We had a most delicious journey to Marseilles, through a country full of vineyards, oliveyards, orange-trees, and the like sweet plantations, to which belong pleasantly situated villas built all of freestone.

We went to visit the galleys; the captain of the galley-royal gave us most courteous entertainment in his cabin, the slaves playing loud and soft music.  Then he showed us how he commanded their motions with a nod and his whistle, making them row out.  The spectacle was to me new and strange, to see so many hundreds of miserably naked persons, having their heads shaven close, and having only high red bonnets, a pair of coarse canvas drawers, their whole backs and legs naked, doubly chained about their middles and legs in couples, and made fast to their seats, and all commanded by a cruel seaman.  Their rising forward and falling back at their oar is a miserable spectacle, and the noise of their chains with the roaring of the beaten waters has something of the strange and fearful to one unaccustomed to it.  They are chastised on the least disorder, and without the least humanity; yet are they cheerful and full of knavery.

January 31, 1645.  Climbing a steep hill in Naples, we came to the monastery of the Carthusians, from whence is a most goodly prospect towards the sea and city, the one full of galleys and ships, the other of stately palaces, churches, castles, gardens, delicious fields and meadows, Mount Vesuvius smoking, doubtless one of the most considerable vistas in the world.