Book excerpt: John Evelyn ranks with his friend Samuel Pepys as one of the best loved of English diarists. This is an absorbing new study of the most controversial episode of his life: his passionate "seraphic" friendship with Margaret Godolphin, a maid of honor at the Restoration court of Charles II. Set against the vivid background of the court and the great gardens of the time, Transformations of Love provides new insights into the sexual and spiritual worlds of early modern England.