Locke was found to have performed so well his duties as secretary to Sir Walter Vane, that immediately after his return to London-where he met the court, which had just returned from Oxford-proposals for more important diplomatic work were made to him. "I am now offered a fair opportunity of going into Spain with the ambassador," he wrote to his friend John Strachey.' The new ambassador to Spain was Edward Montagu, Earl of Sandwich, chiefly memorable as a naval commander he was killed while showing some desperate valour at the battle of Solebay, in May, 1672—but a useful statesman, as statesmen went in those days. France, in formal alliance with Holland, having just declared war against England, it was deemed very important to secure, if possible, the support of Spain. Accordingly, Sandwich was hastily appointed to supersede Sir Richard Fanshaw at Madrid, and William Godolphin was selected to accompany him as "assistant," in some position superior to that of a secretary. It was doubtless as secretary, and at Godolphin's instigation, that Locke was invited to join the embassy. It was indeed a "fair opportunity" of stepping forward in diplomatic life, certain, in the case of a man of ability, and not too scrupulous, to lead to very high employment in the public service. Locke so regarded it. "If I embrace it," he said, “I shall conclude this my wandering year. If I go, I shall not have above ten days' stay in England. I am pulled both ways by divers considerations, and do yet waver. intend to-morrow for Oxford, and shall there take my resolution." He did so, and posterity may be grateful to 1 Lord King, p. 25; Locke to Strachey, 22 Feb., 1665-6. I Whether I have let slip one has once in his life to This I am sure, I never him for his decision. "Those fair offers I had to go to Spain," he wrote to Strachey from Oxford a week later, "have not prevailed with me. the minute that they say every make himself, I cannot tell. trouble myself for the loss of that which I never had." The ship containing the Earl of Sandwich, William Godolphin, and their suite, weighed anchor on the 3rd of March.2 Having chosen to stay in England, Locke appears to have decided to resume his old ways of life at Oxford; but before settling down again he paid a visit, both of business and of pleasure, to Somersetshire. "I sent my uncle a letter of attorney before I left England," he had written from Cleve to Strachey early in the previous December, "to authorise him to dispose of my affairs there, and settle my estate as he shall think most convenient. I hope he received it. I think it best my tenants should not know that I am out of England, for perhaps that may make them the more slack to pay their rents."3 The uncle here referred to was doubtless Peter King, one of old John Locke's executors, who continued to assist in looking after his nephew's property, which, as we have seen, was now worth about 70l. a year. It is evident, however, that Locke did not altogether leave the management of this property in other hands; and he now went down to see that affairs were in order, as well as to pay a visit to his kinsfolk and friends in Somersetshire, and especially, it would seem, to Strachey. Of Strachey we know very little, save that at this time 1 Lord King, p. 25; Locke to Strachey, 28 Feb., 1665-6. he was one of Locke's most intimate acquaintances. Born in 1634, he was Locke's junior by two years, andas he inherited from his mother, the widow of Samuel Baber, who had married one of the Stracheys of Saffron Walden, a goodly estate and a fine old manor house known as Sutton Court, and only about three miles from Pensford-they were doubtless friends from childhood, perhaps also college companions. As Strachey read law at Gray's Inn, he probably had before that a university education; but, whatever his training, he appears, before he was thirty or thirty-one, to have settled down for the short remainder of his life-he died in 1674-as a country gentleman. "Throw by this," Locke said in a postscript to the letter that has just been quoted from, "in some corner of your study till I come, and then we will laugh together, for it may serve to recall other things to my memory." "What private observations I have made,' he wrote again as soon as he had returned to London, "will be fitter for our table at Sutton than a letter; and if I have the opportunity to see you shortly, we may possibly laugh together at some German stories." In the letter which he sent six days later from Oxford, he congratulated himself that his resolution not to go to Spain would enable him to pay his visit to Sutton, "a greater rarity," he added, "than my travels have afforded me; for, believe me, one may go a long way before one meets a friend." Locke went to Somersetshire in March, and appears to have stayed there till near the end of April; but we have no information concerning either his holiday-making at Sutton Court, or his business occupations as landlord at Pensford and in the neighbourhood. All we know of his 1 Lord King, p. 25; Locke to Strachey, 22 Feb., 1665-6. . 33 doings at this period is contained in a letter that he addressed to Robert Boyle after he had returned to Oxford. Boyle, hearing of Locke's visit to the west of England, had sent him down a barometer, with which to make observations concerning the temperature in different parts, especially in the lead mines then and for some previous centuries worked in the Mendip Hills; and Locke wrote an entertaining and instructive report of his efforts to make the desired observations, and of other matters connected and disconnected therewith. "As soon as the barometer came to my hands," he said, "I rode to Mendip with an intention to make use of it there in one of the deepest gruffs-for so they call their pits-I could find. The deepest I could hear of was about thirty fathoms, but the descent so far either from easy, safe, or perpendicular, that I was discouraged from entering on it. They do not, as in wells, sink their pits straight down, but as the crannies of the rocks give them the easiest passage: neither are they let down by a rope; but, taking the rope under their arm, by setting their hands and legs against the sides of the narrow passage, clamber up and down, which is not very easy for one not used to it, and almost impossible to carry down the barometer, both the hands being employed." By these obstacles Locke was deterred from pursuing his scientific observations; but he sent to Boyle-what is to us, if it was not to him, more interesting-some information about the people engaged in the mines. He did not find these men or their ways very enlightened, though perhaps it was not strange that the barometer should have frightened them. "The sight of the engine," he said, "and my desire of going down into some of their gruffs, gave them terrible apprehensions, and I could not persuade them but that I had some design; so that I and a gentleman that bore me company"-probably John Strachey-"had a pleasant scene, whilst their fear to be undermined by us made them disbelieve all we told them, and, do what we could, they would think us craftier fellows than we were. The women, too, were alarmed, and think us still either projectors or conjurors." "Since I could' not get down into their gruffs," he went on to say, "I made it my business to inquire what I could concerning them. The workmen could give me very little account of anything but what profit made them seek after. They could apprehend no other mineral but lead ore, and believed the earth held nothing else worth seeking for. Besides, they were not forward to be too communicative to one they thought they had reason to be afraid of. But at my return, calling at a gentleman's house, who lives under Mendip Hills, amongst other things he told me this, that sometimes the damps catch them, and then, if they cannot get out soon enough, they fall into a swoon, and die in it; and, as soon as they have them above ground, they dig a hole in the earth, and then put in all but their faces, and cover them close up with turfs; and this is the surest remedy they have yet found to recover them. In deep pits they convey down air by the side of the gruff, in a little passage from the top; and that the air may circulate better, they set up some turfs on the inside of the hole, to catch, and so force down, the fresh air; but if these turfs be removed to the windy side, or laid close over the mouth of the hole, those below find it immediately by want of breath, indisposition, and fainting, and if they chance to have any sweet flowers with them, they |