in desperation, to King Charles himself, and in the same way receiving instructions indiscriminately from Arlington, Clarendon, and their subordinates. In a small matter like this there was not room for much confusion; but it is easy to see what risks, in weightier business, would be incurred from such a redundance of masters, especially when the masters were jealous of one another, and when, as was often the case, the lord chancellor had to dictate his letters from the bed to which he was confined by the gout, and the secretary of state's letters were scribbled off in the ante-chamber of one or other of his own or his sovereign's mistresses.

The public import of this embassy, however, does not much concern us. The interest lies, not in Locke's first and last experiment in diplomatic service, but in his personal experiences during a winter visit to a quaint old town in the western valley of the Rhine, and to one of the most antiquated and pettifogging of German courts.1

1 Le Clerc says in his Eloge,' that "in 1664 Locke left England, and went to Germany as secretary to Sir William Swann, who was envoy of the king of England to the elector of Brandenburg, and some other German princes." Le Clerc mistook the year, and confounded Swann with Vane. Sir William Swann was envoy to the Hanse Towns, and resident at Hamburg, between 1662 and 1673, and a friend has called my attention to a letter signed by Swann, but writen by a secretary whose handwriting is somewhat like Locke's, dated March 22nd, 1664, among the Hamburg State Papers in the Record Office. The same handwriting, however, appears in several other letters of this series; the first dated November 3rd, 1663; when, as we have seen, Locke was certainly at Oxford. The handwriting, moreover, though superficially like Locke's, contains characteristic differences from his. Lord King correctly states that Locke went as secretary to Sir Walter Vane, instead of Sir William Swann; but he follows Le Clerc in giving the wrong year,

Leaving Oxford early in November, 1665, and perhaps spending a few days in London, Locke, in attendance on Sir Walter Vane, proceeded, through Ostend, Ghent, and Antwerp, to Brussels, where they arrived on the 24th of the month. There business detained them for a day or two, and they reached their destination, Cleve, the capital of Brandenburg, on the 30th."

"We are here," Locke wrote to Boyle on the 12th of December, “in a place in a place very little considerable for anything but its antiquity, which to me seems neither to commend things nor opinions; and I should scarce prefer an old ruinous and incommodious house to a new and more convenient, though Julius Cæsar built it, as they say he did this the elector dwells in; which opinion the situation, just on the edge of a precipice, and the oldness of the building, seem to favour. The town is little, and not very strong or handsome; the buildings and streets irregular. Nor is there a greater uniformity in their religion, three professions being publicly allowed. The Calvinists are more than the Lutherans, and the catholics more than both-but no papist bears any office-besides some anabaptists, who are not publicly tolerated. But yet this distance in their churches gets not into their houses. They quietly permit one another to choose their way to heaven; for I cannot observe any quarrels or animosities amongst them upon the account of religion.

1 Foreign State Papers, German States, series i., nos. 128, 139; Vane to Arlington, 23 Nov., 4 Dec., and 21-31 Dec., 1665.

2 Ibid., no. 182; Vane to Arlington (not dated). Some of the letters in this correspondence are dated according to the old (English), some according to the new (continental) style, a difference of ten days, thus causing a little confusion; but I believe the dates given in the text correctly follow the English rule.

This good correspondence is owing partly to the power of the magistrate, and partly to the prudence and good nature of the people, who, as I find by inquiry, entertain different opinions without any secret hatred or rancour."1

The "good nature of the people " seems to have shown itself especially in a love of eating and drinking; and in his amusing descriptions of the feasts at which he was present, Locke appears in a humour new to us. In his first official letters home, Sir Walter Vane complained that he could get no business done for the festivities to which he was expected to devote himself; and to John Strachey, of Sutton, near Bristol, an old family acquaintance, and his junior by two years, of whom we shall see more hereafter, Locke sent long accounts of these festivities, both at court and elsewhere.

"This day," he wrote on or about the 9th of December, "our public entertainment upon the elector's account ended, much to my satisfaction; for I had no great pleasure in a feast where, amidst a great deal of meat and company, I had little to eat and less to say. The advantage was, the lusty Germans fed so heartily themselves, that they regarded not much my idleness; and I might have enjoyed a perfect quiet, and slept out the meal, had not a glass of wine now and then jogged me. And therein lay the care of their entertainment, and the sincerity too, for the wine was such as might be known, and was not ashamed of itself: but, for their meats, they were all so disguised that I should have guessed they had rather designed a mess than a meal, and had a mind rather to pose than feed us. The cook made their metamorphoses like Ovid's, where the change is usually 1 Boyle, Works' (1744), vol. v., p. 565; Locke to Boyle, 12 Dec., 1665.

into the worse. I had, however, courage to venture upon things unknown, and I could not often tell whether I ate flesh, or fish, or good red herring, so much did they dissemble themselves: only, now and then a dish of good honest fresh-water fish came in, so free from all manner of deceit or cheat as they hid not so much as their tails in a drop of butter, nor was there any sauce near to disguise them. What think you of a hen and cabbage? or a piece of powdered beef covered over with preserved quinces? These are no miracles here. One thing there is that I like very well, which is, that they have good salads all the year, and use them frequently. It is true, the elector gave his victuals, but the officers that attended us valued their services, and one of them had ready in his pocket a list of those that expected rewards, at such a rate that the attendance cost more than the meat was worth."1

"I had formerly seen the size and arms of the duke's guards," Locke wrote on the 11th of December to the same friend, whom he seems to have furnished with a regular journal of his proceedings, though all his letters have not been preserved, "but to-day I had a sample of their stomachs-I mean, to eat, not to fight; for, if they be able to do as much that way too, no question but under their guard the duke is as much in safety as I believe his victuals are in danger. But to make you the better understand my story, and the decorum which made me take notice of it, I must first describe the place to you. The place where the elector commonly eats is a large room, into which you enter at the lower end by an ascent of some few steps. Just without this is a lobby. As this evening I was passing through it into the court, I saw a 1 Lord King; Locke to Strachey, 9, 10, and 11 Dec., 1665.

company of soldiers very close together, and a steam rising from the midst of them. I, as strangers use to be, being a little curious, drew near to these men of mettle, where I found three or four earthen fortifications, wherein were intrenched peas-porridge and stewed turnips or apples, most valiantly stormed by these men of war. They stood just opposite to the duke's table, and within view of it; and had the duke been there at supper, as it was very near his supper time, I should have thought they had been set there to provoke his appetite by example, and serve, as cocks have done in some countries before battle, to fight the soldiers into courage; and certainly these soldiers might eat others into stomachs. Here you might have seen the court and camp drawn near together; there a supper preparing with great ceremony, and just by it a hearty meal made without stool, trencher, table-cloth, or napkins, and for aught I could see, without beer, bread, or salt. But I stayed not long; for methought it was a dangerous place, and so I left them in the engagement.

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We can follow Locke to yet another representative meal. “I was invited and dined at a monastery," he wrote on the 9th of December, "with the Franciscan friars, who had before brought a Latin epistle to us for relief; for they live upon others' charity, or, more truly, live idly upon others' labours. But to my dinner; for my mouth waters to be at it, and no doubt you will long for such another entertainment when you know this. After something instead of grace or music-choose you whether, for I could make neither of it; for, though what was sung was Latin, yet the tune was such that I neither understood the Latin nor the harmony; the beginning of the Lord's Prayer, to the first petition, they repeated aloud,

1 Lord King; Locke to Strachey, 9, 10, and 11 Dec., 1665.