happening to be called away from that place, desired Locke to execute the commission. By some accident the waters were not ready when Lord Ashley arrived; and Locke waited on him to apologise for the disappointment, occasioned by the fault of the messenger sent to procure them. Lord Ashley received him with great civility, and was not only satisfied with his excuse, but was so much pleased with his conversation, that he desired to improve an acquaintance thus begun by accident, which afterwards grew into a friendship that continued unchanged to the end of his life.

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From Oxford, Locke accompanied Lord Ashley to Sunning-hill Wells, and afterwards resided for some time, towards the end of the year, at Exeter House in the Strand. During his residence with Lord Ashley in London, he had the opportunity of seeing and conversing with many of the most distinguished characters of those times, the Duke of Buckingham, Lord Halifax, &c. He resided partly at Exeter House, and partly at Oxford, at which last place, in 1670, his great work, the Essay on the Human Understanding,' was sketched out. It arose, as the author says, from the meeting of five or six friends at his chambers; who, finding difficulties in the inquiry and discussion they were engaged in, he was induced to examine what objects our understandings were, or were not, fitted to deal with. The hasty thoughts which he set down against the next meeting, gave the first entrance to that discourse, which, after long intervals and many interruptions, was brought at last into the order

it assumed, when given to the world eighteen years afterwards.

In 1672, Lord Ashley, after filling the office of chancellor of the exchequer, was created Earl of Shaftesbury, and declared lord chancellor. He then appointed Locke his secretary for the presentation of benefices, and also to some office in the council of trade; both of which he quitted in 1673, when Shaftesbury quarrelled with the court, and placed himself at the head of the country party in parliament.

In 1675 Locke went to reside in France for the benefit of his health, where he remained till the beginning of May, 1679, when he returned to London, and took up his abode at Thanet House in Aldersgate-street, Shaftesbury being then at the head of the English administration.

The asthmatic complaint, however, which had induced Locke to leave England in 1675, was an obstacle to any long-continued residence in London, and obliged him to pass the winter season, for the most part, either at Oxford or in the west.

In 1684, Locke was, by an illegal order of the king, deprived of his studentship at Oxford, on account of a suspicion that he was the author of a pamphlet that gave offence to the government. He now retired to Holland, where the persecution of the government still followed him; the king's minister demanding, among several others, that Locke should be delivered up: he was therefore under the necessity of living very much concealed; and he had actually at one time removed from Amsterdam to Utrecht, to avoid the sus

picion of being connected with Monmouth, or abetting his expedition. It was during this seclusion that his Letter on Toleration was finished, in 1685: it was first printed in Latin, and afterwards translated into English, and printed in London after the Revolution. William Penn, who enjoyed the favor of James II. offered to obtain from the king a pardon for Locke, who nobly refused to accept it, being conscious of having committed no crime. The same offer was also made by the Earl of Pembroke.

During his abode in Holland he was occupied in various scientific pursuits. He formed a small society which met weekly at each other's houses, to discuss such questions as had been proposed at à previous meeting. The society consisted of Limborch, Le Clerc, Guenelon, and a few others.

The Revolution of 1688 enabled Locke to return to his native country, and he arrived in the same fleet that brought the Princess of Orange to England. It was almost immediately after his arrival that an offer was made him to be employed as envoy at one of the great German courts; an appointment which he modestly refused. He now endeavored to be reinstated in his studentship at Christ Church, for which purpose he presented a petition to the king as visitor; but finding that he could only be received as a supernumerary, he determined to press his claim no farther.

The Essay on the Human Understanding, which had been finished during the author's retirement in Holland, and the English version of the Letter on

Toleration, were now published on his return to his native country. The Essay, soon after its publication, excited considerable attention. Lord Shaftesbury was one of the first who sounded the alarm against what he conceived to be the drift of that philosophy, which denies the existence of innate principles.

About four years after the publication of the Essay, that is, towards the end of the year 1694, the new philosophy began to excite some attention at Oxford. Mr. Wynne, fellow of Jesus College, was the first who recommended the Essay in that University. With the approbation of the author, whom he consulted on the subject, this gentleman published an abridgment of the work.

After the first objections had been overcome, the success of the Essay must be considered to have been very great, as its several successive editions during the life of the author, as well as an excellent translation by M. Coste into the French language, sufficiently attest. If, however, the Essay received the approbation of enlightened men, not only in England, but on the continent; yet, after an interval of several years from its first publication, when time had been allowed to sift its merits and decide its character, it excited the disapprobation of the heads of houses at Oxford, who at one time took counsel to banish it from that seat of learning.

It may be here necessary to give some account of the attack which Dr. Stillingfleet made on the Essay,

as also on the principles of the author. Toland had published a book called Christianity not Mysterious,' in which he endeavored to prove that there is nothing in the Christian religion contrary to reason, or even above it; and in explaining his doctrines, had used several arguments from the Essay on the Human Understanding. It happened also that some Unitarian treatises, published nearly at the same time, maintained that there was nothing in the Christian religion but what was rational and intelligible; and Locke, having asserted in his writings, that revelation delivers nothing contrary to reason; the bishop of Worcester, defending the mysteries of the Trinity against Toland and the Unitarians, denounced some of Locke's principles as heretical, and classed his works with those of the above writers. Locke answered the bishop, who replied the same year. This reply was confuted by a second letter of Locke, which produced a second answer from the bishop in 1698. Locke again replied in a third letter, wherein he treated more largely of the certainty of reason by ideas, of the certainty of faith, of the resurrection of the same body, and the immateriality of the soul. He showed the perfect agreement of his principles with the Christian religion, and that he had advanced nothing which had the least tendency to scepticism, with which the bishop had very ignorantly charged him. The death of Stillingfleet put an end to the controversy.

Locke's literary employments at this period were