made such an agreeable impression on my mind, that nothing can be more pleasing. To all in that excellent family, I beseech you, give my most humble respects. It is my duty to make my acknowledgments there in a particular letter; but I beg of you to make my excuse for omitting it at this time, because I am a little pressed by some business that is thrown upon me since my arrival. To which also you are obliged for not being troubled at present with a more tedious letter from,

YOURS of the 20th has now discharged me from my daily employment of looking upon the weather cock, and hearkening how loud the wind blowed. Though I do not like this distance, and such a ditch betwixt us, yet I am glad to hear that you are safe and sound on the other side the water. But pray speak not in so magnificent and courtly a style of what you received from me here. I lived with you, and treated you as my friend, and therefore used no ceremony, nor can receive any thanks but what I owe you doubly, both for your company, and the pains you were at to bestow that happiness on me If you keep your word, and do me the same kindness again next year, I shall have reason to think you value me more than you say, though you say more than I can with modesty read.

I find you were beset with business when you writ your letter to me, and do not wonder at it; but yet, for

all that, I cannot forgive your silence concerning your health and your son. My service to him, your brother, and Mr. Burridge, and do me the justice to believe, that I am, with a perfect affection,

YOU guessed not amiss, when you said, in the beginning of yours of the 13th instant, that you gave me the trouble of a letter; for I have received few letters in my life, the contents whereof have so much troubled and afflicted me, as that of yours. I parted with my excellent friend, when he went from England, with all the hopes and promises, to myself, of seeing him again, and enjoying him longer in the next spring. This was a satisfaction that helped me to bear our separation; and the short taste I had of him here, in this our first interview, I hoped would be made up in a longer conversation, which he promised me the next time: but it has served only to give me a greater sense of my loss, in an eternal farewel in this world. Your earlier acquaintance may have given you a longer knowledge of his virtue and excellent endowments; a fuller sight, or greater esteem of them, you could not have than I. His worth, and his friendship to me, made him an inestimable treasure, which I must regret the loss of, the little remainder of my life, without any hopes of repairing it any way. I should be glad, if what I owed the father could enable me to do any service to his son. He deserves it for his own sake (his father has more than once talked to me of him) as well as for his father's. I desire you there,

fore to assure those who have the care of him, that if there be any thing wherein I, at this distance, may be any way serviceable to young Mr. Molyneux, they cannot do me a greater pleasure than to give me the opportunity to show, that my friendship died not with him. Pray give my most humble service to Dr. Molyneux, and to his nephew. I am,

I AM very sensible of your great civility in remembering me upon so short an acquaintance as I had with you in Holland, so long time since; and I assure you, without any compliment, I reckon it amongst the most fortunate accidents of my life, my so luckily falling into your conversation, which was so candid, diverting, and instructive, that I still reap the benefit and satisfaction of it. Some years after I left you in Holland, upon my return for England, I contracted no small intimacy with Dr. Sydenham, on the account of having been known to you his much esteemed friend; and I found him so accurate an observer of diseases, so thoroughly skilled in all useful knowledge of his profession, and withal so communicative, that his acquaintance was a very great advantage to me: and all this I chiefly owe to you, Sir, besides the information of many useful truths, and a great deal of very pleasing entertainment I have met with, in the perusal of your lately published writings; so that, on many accounts, I must needs say,

there are very few men in the world, to whom I can, with the like sincerity, profess myself to be, as I am,

Dear SIR,

Your most real friend,

and very humble and obliged servant,

THO. MOLYNEUX.

SIR,

Mr. LOCKE to Dr. MOLYNEUX.

Oates, Nov. 1, 1692.

THE indisposition of my health, which drove me out of London, and keeps me still in the country, must be an excuse for my so long silence. The very great civility you express to me in your letter, makes me hope your pardon for the slowness of my answer, whereby I hope you will not measure the esteem and respect I have for you. That your own distinguishing merit, amongst the rest of my countrymen I met with at Leyden, has so settled in me, that before the occasion your brother's favour lately gave me to inquire after you, I often remembered you, and it was not without regret. I considered you at a distance that allowed me not the hopes of renewing and improving my acquaintance with you. There being nothing I value so much, as ingenious knowing men, think it not strange that I laid hold on the first opportunity to bring myself again into your thoughts. You must take it as an exercise of your goodness, drawn on you by your own merit; for, whatever satisfaction I gain to myself in having recovered you again, I can propose no advantage to you, in the offer of a very useless and infirm acquaintance, who can only boast that he very much esteems you.

That which I always thought of Dr. Sydenham living, I find the world allows him now he is dead, and that he deserved all that you say of him. I hope the I hope the age has

many who will follow his example, and by the way of accurate practical observation, as he has so happily begun, enlarge the history of diseases, and improve the art of physic, and not by speculative hypotheses fill the world with useless, though pleasing visions. Something of this kind permit me to promise myself one day from your judicious pen. I know nothing that has so great an encouragement from mankind as this.

I beg you to present my most humble service to your brother, whom I forbear now to interrupt, in the midst of his parliamentary affairs, whereof I know a great part must fall to his share, with my thanks for the favour of his of the 15th of October, which lately found me out safe here. Let him know that I am exceedingly sensible of the obligation, and shall at large make my acknowledgments to him as soon as good manners will allow it. I am,

I AM much concerned to hear you have your health no better, and on this occasion cannot but deplore the great losses the intellectual world in all ages has suffered, by the strongest and soundest minds possessing the most infirm and sickly bodies. Certainly there must be some very powerful cause for this in nature, or else we could not have so many instances, where the knife cuts the sheath, as the French materially express it: and if so, this must be reckoned among the many other inseparable miseries that attend human affairs.