There have been other diaries which have historic value; there was Hyde, Earl of Clarendon,[81] with some humor and a lordly grace, who wrote a _History of the Rebellion_--more than half diary--with sentences as long as his pages; but it does not compare with Pepys’ for flashes of light upon the accidents of life. There was good, earnest, well-meaning John Evelyn,[82] who had a pretty place called Says-Court (inherited through his wife) down at Deptford--which Scott introduces as the residence of Essex in his story of _Kenilworth_--who had beautiful trees and flowers there which he greatly loved. Well, John Evelyn wrote a diary, and a very good one; with perhaps a better description of the great London fire of 1666 in it than you will find anywhere else; he gives us, too, a delightful memorial of his young daughter Mary--who read the Ancients, who spoke French and Italian, who sang like an angel, who was as gentle and loving as she was wise and beautiful--whose death “left him desolate;” but John Evelyn is silent upon a thousand points in respect to which Pepys bristles all over like a gooseberry bush. Dr. Burnet, too, wrote a _History of his Own Times_, bringing great scholarly attainments to its execution, and a tremendous dignity of authorship; and he would certainly have turned up his bishop’s nose at mention of Samuel Pepys; yet Pepys is worth a dozen of him for showing the life of that day. He is so simple; he is so true; he is so unthinking; he is the veriest photographer. Hear him for a little--and I take the passages almost at random: “_November 9, 1660._--Lay long in bed this morning. “To the office, and thence to dinner at the Hoope Tavern, given us by Mr. Ady and Mr. Wine the King’s fishmonger. Good sport with Mr. Talbot, who eats no sort of fish, and there was nothing else till we sent for a neat’s tongue. “Thence I went to Sir Harry Wright’s, where my Lord was busy at cards, and so I staid below with Mrs. Carter and Evans, who did give me a lesson upon the lute, till he came down, and having talked with him at the door about his late business of money, I went to my father’s, and staid late talking with my father about my sister Poll’s coming to live with me--if she would come and be as a servant (which my wife did seem to be pretty willing to do to-day); and he seems to take it very well, and intends to consider of it.” And again: “Home by coach, notwithstanding this was the first day of the King’s proclamation against hackney coaches coming into the streets to stand to be hired; yet I got one to carry me home.” Again: