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under the new Government which yielded him a competent support. but his health failing he gave up his offices in 1700, and passed the four remaining years of his lite in retirement at the family seat of his friend Sir Francis Masham.

Locke's writings are numerous, and are of various kinds, according to the varieties of experience of his life.

Political Writings. By the circumstances of his life he was thrown into connection with the statesmen to whom the public affairs of the nation were subjects of controlling practical interest. His thoughts consequently were much occupied with questions of this kind, and though not a professed political writer, in the sense of being a partisan, he yet wrote several treatises on political subjects. Among these may be named his celebrated Letters on Toleration, giving views in regard to political liberty much in advance of his times; Two Treatises on Government; On Interest and The Value of Money; On Coining Silver Money; On Raising the Value of Money, etc.

Religious and Educational. — Being a devout Christian, Locke wrote On the Reasonableness of Christianity, on Miracles, A Paraphrase and Notes on the Epistles to the Romans, Corinthians, Galatians, and Ephesians, and other works of a religious and devotional kind. He wrote also Thoughts concerning Education, a treatise which, though containing some things now ascertained to be impracticable, has yet many valuable suggestions, and is an important part of the literature of that subject.

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His Great Work. The great work of Locke's life, however, was An Essay concerning the Human Understanding. He was occupied with this, at intervals, for eighteen years. It gave him rank as a philosopher and metaphysician of world-wide celebrity, causing his name to be associated with those of Bacon and Newton as leaders of human thought.

The theory which Locke undertook to explode was the old doctrine of innate ideas, and the theory which he proposed in its place was that all human knowledge begins with sensation. This theory, which for a time obtained almost universal ascendency, has been materially modified since his day, and he himself is no longer acknowledged as a leader in any school of philosophy. But he did a great service by his unanswerable refutation of many errors which up to that time held undisputed sway, and by the example which he gave of a more rational way of treating metaphysical subjects.

Locke's Essay, on account of the freshness and vigor of its style,

held its place as a text-book in institutions of learning much longer than it otherwise would have done. While he makes no pretence to ornament, and never runs into smooth phrase or rounded periods, he avoids most sedulously the uncouth and abstruse jargon of the older writers on metaphysics, and aims everywhere to make his meaning plain and obvious to the common understanding. His diction is that of the common people, his illustrations are drawn from common life. His book, even in the abstrusest parts of it, is entertaining.

Boyle.

Hon. Robert Boyle, 1627-1691, son of the "Great Earl of Cork," is greatly distinguished as an experimental philosopher, of the school of Bacon, and as the chief founder of the Royal Society.

Character and Life. Boyle was a very devout man, and though strongly tempted to enter into political life, he steadily declined, and gave himself entirely to the cultivation of science and the practice of religious duties, and at his death he bequeathed a fund for the endowment of an annual course of lectures in defence of the Christian religion. These lectures began in 1692, one hundred and eighty years ago. Many of them have been printed. They form a valuable series of works on the evidences of Christianity. Mr. Boyle himself wrote several works of the same sort, and studied the Hebrew and Greek languages for the sake of qualifying himself better to write on this subject.

He was a man of such a devout and reverent character that he would never utter the name of God in conversation without first making a slight but perceptible pause. His chief labors and writings were in the line of experimental philosophy. He was the principal founder of the Royal Society, and was offered the Presidency of it, but he declined the honor, as he repeatedly declined the peerage. He was never married, but lived in London with his sister, Lady Ranelagh, whom he survived only a week. Boyle belonged to the same school of philosophy as Bacon, and may be considered indeed as intellectually the successor and heir of the latter. In reference to the fact that Boyle was born on the day that Bacon died, it was well said: Sol occubuit; nox nulla secuta est (The sun has set; but no night followed).

Works. After Boyle's death, his works were collected and published in 5 vols., fol. His principal works, exclusive of those of a purely scientific character, are the following: Seraphic Love; Considerations upon the Style of the Holy Scriptures: Occasional Reflections; A Discourse of Things above Reason; A Free Inquiry into the

Vulgarly received Notion of Nature; A Free Discourse against Customary Swearing; On the High Veneration Man's Intellect Owes to God; The Reconcileableness of Reason and Religion.

"No one Englishman of the seventeenth century, after Lord Bacon, raised to him self so high a reputation in experimental philosophy as Robert Boyle.” — Hallam.

"As a philosopher he conferred advantages on science which place him in the same rank with Bacon and Newton." — Cunningham.

"Some of the most striking and beautiful instances of design in the order of the material world, which occur in the sermons preached at the Boyle Lectures, are bor rowed from the works of the founder."— Dugald Stewart.

Temple.

Sir William Temple, 1628-1699, a well-known English diplomatist, attained distinction as a writer.

Career. Temple studied at Cambridge, and afterwards travelled on the continent in company with his tutor, Dr. Ralph Cudworth. Temple entered upon political life and rose to distinction. His chief services were the negotiation of the Triple Alliance between England, Holland, and Sweden, in 1668, the treaty of peace between England and Holland, and the marriage between William, Prince of Orange; and the Princess Mary of England. Temple finally abandoned politics and retired to his country-seat of Moor Park. Here he had, for a number of years, as private secretary, Swift, who was then a young man unknown to fame.

Works.-Temple's works fall into two classes, his Memoirs and his Miscellanies. The former consist chiefly of letters and autobiographical essays. The latter comprise his detached essays on various topics. One of them, the Essay on Ancient Learning, has attained considerable notoriety from the circumstance that its author was totally unfamiliar with the subject, and betrayed his ignorance. Temple's chief merit consists in his style, which has received the almost universal praise of critics.

"Next to Dryden, the second place among the polite writers of the period from the Restoration to the end of the century has commonly been given to Sir William Temple. His Miscellanies, to which principally this praise belongs, are not recommended by more erudition than a retired statesman might acquire with no great expense of time, nor by much originality of reflection. But, if Temple has not profound knowledge, he turns all he possesses well to account; if his thoughts are not very striking, they are commonly just. He has less eloquence than Bolingbroke, but is also free from his restlessness and ostentation. Much also which now appears superficial in Temple's historical surveys was far less familiar in his age; he has the merit of a comprehensive and a candid mind. His style, to which we should particularly refer, will be found in comparison with his contemporaries highly polished, and sustained with more equability than they have preserved, remote from anything either pedantic or humble. The periods are studiously rhythmical; yet they want the variety and peculiar charm that we admire in those of Dryden."- Hallam.

Algernon Sidney.

Algernon Sidney, 1621-1683, is known chiefly on political grounds.

Sidney was distinguished for his enlightened and republican principles. Being convicted of treason, and executed, on an accusation which was afterwards proved to be false, he became in the popular estimation a martyr, and his name has been invested with a halo of glory. He belonged to a noble family, and he was himself a man of elegant culture and manners. He wrote Discourses on Government, containing his political views, Letters, and an Essay on Love.

"In all the Discourses of Algernon Sidney upon Government we see constant indications of a rooted dislike to monarchy and an ardent love of democracy: but not a sentence can we find that shows the illustrious author to have regarded the manner in which the people were represented as of any importance."- Brougham.

Evelyn.

John Evelyn, F. R. S., 1620-1705, is chiefly known by his Sylva, or a Discourse on Forest Trees.

“Evelyn's Sylva is still the manual of British planters, and his life, manners, and principles, as illustrated in his Memoirs, ought equally to be the manual of English gentlemen."- Walter Scott. Evelyn was a man of elegant culture, and both in his life and writings maintained a singular purity of character, the more noticeable on account of the general dissoluteness of manners of the age in which he lived. He was married at the age of twenty-six to a girl not yet fourteen, the daughter of the English ambassador in Paris. Evelyn's plan seems to have been to marry the young lady first, and educate her afterwards. She writes of him after his death:

"His care of my education was such as might become a father, a lover, a friend, and a husband, for instruction, tenderness, affection, and fidelity, to the last moment of his life, which obligation I mention with a gratitude to his memory ever dear to me; and I must not omit to own the sense I have of my parents' care and goodness in placing me in such worthy hands."

Evelyn was one of the earliest members of the Royal Society; his work on forest trees was written at their request, and was the first work published by them. It was written in view of the rapid destruction and disappearance of the forest trees in England, and of the importance of maintaining a proper amount of timber on the island, in order to the naval supremacy of the nation. The work was a seasonable one, and it seems to have had the desired effect.

“Inquire at the Admiralty how the fleets of Nelson have been constructed, and they can tell you that it was with the oaks which the genius of Evelyn planted.”—Disraeli. Evelyn's other works are numerous. The following are the chief: Sculpture, a History of the Art of Engraving; Terra, a Philosophical Discourse on Earth; A Parallel of the Ancient Architecture with the Modern; Acetaria, a Discourse of Sallets; Fumifugium, or The Inconvenience of the Air and Smoke of London Dissipated; Numismata, a Discourse of Metals, etc., etc.

Ray.

John Ray (Wray), 1627-1704, attained distinction as a naturalist.

Career. Ray was the son of a blacksmith; he studied at Cambridge, and was admitted to orders in the Church of England. In 1662 he refused to sign the Act of Uniformity, and resigned his fellowship. In company with his friend and patron, Willoughby, he travelled on the continent for three years, making scientific investigations. He was made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1667.

Ray was a man of considerable general learning and ability, but is chiefly known as a naturalist. Nearly all his works, which are very numerous, are on natural-history topics. The greatest of them are his Universal History of Plants, and his Synopsis of Quadrupeds and Serpents. Ray's contributions to the study of botany and zoology are extremely valuable. He was the first fairly to establish the great division of plants into monocotyledonous and dicotyledonous, and of animals into those with and those without blood. Cuvier pronounces him "the first true systematist of the animal kingdom." Traces of his influence are everywhere visible in the works of Linnæus, Buffon, and others. Besides his strictly scientific works, Ray published a small collection of English Proverbs and an account of his Travels on the continent.

JOHN WALLIS, D. D., 1616-1703, is the author of the first English Grammar published.

Wallis was eminent as an astronomer and a mathematician, was Professor of Geometry at Oxford, and Keeper of the University Archives. He was Secretary to the Westminster Assembly of Divines, and also afterwards was one of the divines appointed on the Presbyterian side, in the Savoy Conference of 1661, to revise the Book of Common Prayer. Wallis published many works of a scientific character, mostly in Latin. He is connected with English literature only by the fact that he wrote on English Grammar, 1653. Even this is in Latin, but as it was the first attempt, of any moment, to reduce the laws of the English language to system and rule, and as this treatise contains the germ of most that has since been accomplished in this line, it deserves at least this passing notice.

SAMUEL PEPYS, 1632-1703, has a permanent place in literature, by virtue of his Diary, which was not known to be in existence until more than a century after his death, and which was not published in full until a few years ago.

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