went south, through Drenthe and Over-Yssel, to Deventer, where he saw some Christian communistic establishments of an older sort. "Here are two protestant nunneries. One belongs to the freemen of the town, and their daughters only are admitted. These are fourteen. They live altogether in one house. The oldest, of course, is the abbess. They have each a little garden, and their dividend of the corn and some land which belongs to them, which amounts to three or four bushels of rye. Their meat and drink they provide for themselves, and dress it in a common kitchen in the summer, in the winter in their chambers. There was formerly, before the Reformation, a convent of catholic nuns; and when in the last war the bishop of Munster was possessed of this town two years together, he put three catholic maids into the nunnery, which remain there still, under the same rules as the others. There is, besides this, another nunnery in the town, only of the noblesse of the province; they have each four hundred guilders per annum, one half whereof the abbess has for their board, the other half they have themselves to dispose of as they please. They have no particular habit, and are often at home with their friends in the country.

From Deventer Locke went, on the 10th of September, to visit Zutphen, Arnheim, and other places rendered classical by the great struggle between the Netherlanders and Philip the Second of Spain; but his observations. were less noteworthy here than in the more northern and out-of-the-way parts. He spent some days at Utrecht, and went thence to Amsterdam on the 30th of September, though only to go on the 5th of October to Leyden, which to him was a classic spot indeed.

1 Lord King, p. 165.

Et. 52.

At Leyden, Descartes, his first great master, had settled down in 1629, to spend eight years of privacy in elaborating his method of philosophy. Here, or at Rijnsburg hard by, Spinoza, Descartes's greatest and most errant disciple-unless Locke may be reckoned such-had, in 1660, taken refuge from the persecutions of his Jewish kinsfolk in Amsterdam. At the university, founded only in 1575, but now nearly the most famous in Europe, Grotius, whom Locke looked up to as his foremost teacher in politics and all its philosophical and theological connections, had in 1594 begun to study under professors as learned as Joseph Scaliger. Here Arminius, who had Grotius for one of his converts to unsectarian Christianity, taught his simple doctrines from 1603 till his death in 1609; and here the elder Gronovius had been professor between 1651 and 1671. Of him perhaps Locke did not think so very highly; at any rate, he spoke rather scornfully of one exploit of his learned son. "The young Gronovius,' he wrote on the 13th of October, "made a solemn oration in the schools. His subject was the original of Romulus. At it were present the curators of the university and the professors, solemnly ushered in by the university officers. Music, instrumental and vocal, began and concluded the scene. The harangue itself began with a magnificent and long compliment to the curators; and then, something being said to the professors and scholars, he came to the main business, which was to show that Romulus was not an Italian born, but came from the east and was of Palestine or thereabout. This, as I remember, was the design of his oration, which lasted almost two hours." 1

Locke appears to have taken advantage of the resources and opportunities of the medical school at Leyden, some

1 Lord King, p. 166.

of the curiosities of which are minutely described in his journal. But, in this first year of his stay in Holland at any rate, he spent only about a month at Leyden. He was at Amsterdam, in November, 1684, when he heard of his expulsion from Christ Church; and by that arbitrary act, and other proceedings that followed it, his plans were considerably altered.

Thus far his voluntary exile in Holland had been little more than a holiday, and, besides all the profit that it brought him in other ways, this holiday had proved very beneficial to his health. "For many years past," he wrote to Nicolas Thoynard, in the first letter, dated November, 1684, that is extant after a gap of more than three years in their correspondence, "I have not felt better than now."1 "In Holland," said Lady Masham, "enjoying better health than he had of a long time done in England, or even in the fine air of Montpellier, he had full leisure to prosecute his thoughts on the subject of Human Understanding-a work which in probability he never would have finished had he continued in England.": We shall see that he also made good use of the leisure that was forced upon him in prosecuting his thoughts on other subjects.

Having completed his long tour through the more interesting parts of Holland in November, 1684, Locke, then in Amsterdam, was intending, as we have seen, to pass the winter at Utrecht, when he heard of Dr. Fell's moneo" against him, and resolved to return at once to

1 Additional MSS., in the British Museum, no. 28753; Locke to Thoynard, [18-] 23 Nov., 1684.

2 MSS. in the Remonstrants' Library; Lady Masham to Le Clerc, 12 Jan., 1704-5.

England. On discovering that he could do himself no good and might do himself much harm by adopting that course, he held to his former intention. Though he had already some excellent friends in Amsterdam, he appears to have there found himself forced into the society of other English refugees, with whose political designs he had little or no sympathy, and in whose characters he saw no ground for expecting that their plots would bring anything but mischief to the cause of real liberty in England. In Utrecht he thought that he would have more leisure and better opportunities for quiet thought and work with his pen. Its milder climate and healthier position as compared with Amsterdam, then much less protected by artificial barriers from inclement weather than now, were also evidently attractive to him.

In the sober old town, which in Holland was surpassed only by Leyden as a seat of learning, and in the house of Mynheer van Gulick, a painter living by St. Pieter's Kerk,1 under the shadow of the great cathedral tower and very near to the university, therefore, he planted himself, and all the books and other luggage that he had brought from England, in or about the first week of December. The first extant letter from him to Limborch was written shortly before he left Amsterdam, and in this he asked for an introduction to John George Graevius, the philologist and archeologist, who had been professor of history at Utrecht since 1660, "or to some other of his learned friends there."2 With Graevius he soon formed a friendship that lasted for many years, and he appears to have

3

1 MSS. in the Remonstrants' Library; Locke to Le Clerc, [22 Sept.-] 2 Oct., 1686.

2 Ibid.; Locke to [Limborch], [20] 30 Nov., 1684.

It is said that Dr. Richard Mead, who was at this time studying

VOL. II.

2

found other congenial society at Utrecht, which relieved the serious work-chiefly, it would seem, in the preparation of the Essay concerning Human Understanding,'— to which, after his year of holiday-making, he now zealously devoted himself. The severe winter affected his health, but hardly, if we may judge from some pleasant, gossiping, but not very important letters that he wrote to Thoynard,' his spirits. From the Abbé Gendron, a skilful physician of Orleans, with whom he had become acquainted in 1678, Thoynard had obtained for him a prescription which he found very serviceable. plaster works miracles," he wrote in the spring; "I find myself much relieved since I have worn it, and I hope it will quite drive away the malady which has been troubling me. M. l'Abbé is the kindest as well as the

"The

ablest of men. Tell him so, if you please, lest he should think me ungrateful." In this letter Locke referred to a wished-for visit from Thoynard, whom he had so often and vainly expected to meet in England. "Is the good news true that I may hope soon to embrace you in these parts? This is the one place in the world where I should most desire to see you.'

72

Locke was not himself much longer at this period in Utrecht. In May his plans of work were roughly interrupted. The sudden and unlooked-for death of Charles the Second on the 6th of February, 1684-5, though followed by the peaceable accession of James the Second,

medicine and other subjects at Utrecht, and was a favourite pupil of Graevius's, had in his possession several letters written to Graevius by Locke; but I cannot trace them.

1 Additional MSS., nos. 28753 and 28728; Locke to Thoynard, [1424 and [16] 26 Feb., 1684-5.

2 Ibid., no. 28728; Locke to Thoynard, [30 March-] 9 April, 1685.