And once a week every philosopher was to “render a public account of his studies,” and every man was to wear “a decent habit or uniform”; and, oh bliss! “one month in the year may be spent in London, or any of the Universities, or in a perambulation for the public benefit.” How the Philosophers would prance! This was on September 3, 1659, the first anniversary of Cromwell’s death. A week or two later, Evelyn wrote again.[230] He had been reading Boyle’s _Seraphick Love_, probably in manuscript, since it did not appear in print till 1660. The “incomparable book” seemed to Evelyn to have been “indicted with a pen snatched from the wing of a seraphim.” “I extremely loved you before,” he wrote, “but my heart is infinitely knit to you now.” And yet, the pity of it! There is a cry of appeal in poor Evelyn’s letter to his friend, and there is no further mention of any Carthusian College. The little cells, and the chess, and the bowls, and the philosophers walking two and two along the garden paths are for the moment forgotten; and in their places comes a shadowy procession of fair and virtuous women— “What think you, Sir, of _Alceste_, that ran into the funeral pile of her husband? The goodness of _Aemilia_, the chastity of _Lucretia_, the faith of _Furia_, of _Portia_?... Take away this love, and the whole earth is but a desert!” As for St. Paul’s remarks, Evelyn thinks very little of them; they were all very well for an itinerant apostle in a time of persecution, but “he confesses he had no command from the Lord.” And what pious and studious wives some of the philosophers have had! Take, for example, _Pudentilla_, who “held the lamp to her husband’s lucubrations.” And good Madame Grotius, and others; while, not to go abroad, in London itself, “the committee-chambers, the parliament-lobby,[231] are sad but evident testimonies of the patience, and the address, the love, and the constancy of those gentle creatures....” Is there no hope that Mr. Boyle may relent, and realise that if Love be virtuous it is seraphic? At least he may remember that in paradise, and in the ark, “there were but couples there, and every creature was in love.” * * * * * Manuscript copies of _Seraphick Love_ were evidently in circulation. A pirated and incorrect copy had been offered for sale to a London stationer, who had communicated with Mr. Boyle; and Boyle, who had long refused, was persuaded at last to publish it himself. It may have been in proof-form that Evelyn, in September 1659, read the little treatise—written eleven years before by a very sad young man at delicious Leeze. Eleven years had not altered Mr. Boyle’s convictions; and _Seraphick Love_ was to be one of the most notable, if the least characteristic, publications of the “Annus Mirabilis.”[232]