I went to visit Mr. Waller, an extraordinary young gentleman of great accomplishments, skilled in mathematics, anatomy, music, painting both in oil and miniature to great perfection, an excellent botanist, a rare engraver on brass, writer in Latin, and a poet; and with all this exceedingly modest. His house is an academy of itself. I carried him to see Brompton Park [by Knightsbridge], where he was in admiration at the store of rare plants, and the method he found in that noble nursery, and how well it was cultivated. A public Bank of £140,000, set up by Act of Parliament among other Acts, and Lotteries for money to carry on the war. The whole month of April without rain. A great rising of people in Buckinghamshire, on the declaration of a famous preacher, till now reputed a sober and religious man, that our Lord Christ appearing to him on the 16th of this month, told him he was now come down, and would appear publicly at Pentecost, and gather all the saints, Jews and Gentiles, and lead them to Jerusalem, and begin the Millennium, and destroying and judging the wicked, deliver the government of the world to the saints. Great multitudes followed this preacher, divers of the most zealous brought their goods and considerable sums of money, and began to live in imitation of the primitive saints, minding no private concerns, continually dancing and singing Hallelujah night and day. This brings to mind what I lately happened to find in Alstedius, that the thousand years should begin this very year 1694; it is in his "Encyclopædia Biblica." My copy of the book printed near sixty years ago.[Pg 326]

WOTTON