What he liked, he _loved_; and what he did not like, he _hated_.

There was no golden mean with him; he was either very optimistic or else intensely pessimistic.

Hence, naturally, he gave hard knocks to those who differed from him in opinion, and particularly after the Restoration; for he was one of the most expressive among King Charles II's courtiers.

Direct evidence of this special temperament was characteristic of Evelyn throughout all his life, and was of course particularly noticeable in his writings, as we shall subsequently see.
It is therefore only to be expected that he prized his father's little estate of Wotton in Surrey as one of the finest in the kingdom.

'Wotton, the mansion house of my Father, left him by my Grandfather, (now my eldest Brother's), is situated in the most Southern part of the Shire, and though in a valley, yet really upon part of Lyth Hill one of the most eminent in England for the prodigious prospect to be seen from its summit, tho' of few observed.