After what has been said respecting Shaftesbury House, it may be supposed that its associations with the memory of remarkable individuals are exhausted. This is very far from being the case; and a long period in its history, from 1635 to 1699, remains to be filled up, which, however, must be done by conjecture: although so many circumstances are upon record, that it is not impossible others can be produced to complete a chain of evidence that may establish among those who have been inmates of the ADDITIONAL WORKHOUSE OF ST. GEORGE’S, HANOVER SQUARE—startling as the assertion may appear—two of the most illustrious individuals in the annals of this country; of one of whom Bishop Burnet observed, {110} that his “loss is lamented by all learned men;” the other, a man whose “great and distinguishing knowledge was the knowledge of human nature or the powers and operations of the mind, in which he went further, and spoke clearer, than all other writers who preceded him, and whose ‘Essay on the Human Understanding’ is the best book of logic in the world.” After this, I need scarcely add that BOYLE and LOCKE are the illustrious individuals referred to. The amiable John Evelyn, in his ‘Diary,’ mentions his visiting Mr. Boyle at Chelsea, on the 9th March, 1661, in company “with that excellent person and philosopher, Sir Robert Murray,” where they “saw divers effects of the eolipile for weighing air.” And in the same year M. de Monconys, a French traveller in England, says, “L’après diné je fus avec M. Oldenburg, {111} et mon fils, à deux milles de Londres en carosse pour cinq chelins à un village nommé _le petit Chelsey_, voir M. Boyle.” Now at this period there probably was no other house at Little Chelsea of sufficient importance to be the residence of the Hon. Robert Boyle, where he could receive strangers in his laboratory and show them his great telescope; and, moreover, notwithstanding what has been said to prove the impossibility of Locke having visited Lord Shaftesbury on this spot, local tradition continues to assert that Locke’s work on the ‘Human Understanding’ was commenced in the retirement of one of the summer-houses of Lord Shaftesbury’s residence. This certainly may have been the case if we regard Locke as a visitor to his brother philosopher, Boyle, and admit his tenancy of the mansion previous to that of Lord Shaftesbury, to whom Locke, it is very probable, communicated the circumstance, and which might have indirectly led to his lordship’s purchase of the premises. Be that as it may, it is an interesting association, with something more than mere fancy for its support, to contemplate a communion between two of the master-minds of the age, and the influence which their conversation possibly had upon that of the other.