On September 2 of this year broke out the Great Fire of London, which raged without intermission for three days and nights. Under the date of September 3 we find in Locke's "Register," which was afterwards published in Boyle's _General History of the Air_, this curious entry:--"Dim reddish sunshine. This unusual colour of the air, which, without a cloud appearing, made the sunbeams of a strange red dim light, was very remarkable. We had then heard nothing of the fire of London; but it appeared afterwards to be the smoke of London, then burning, which, driven this way by an easterly wind, caused this odd phenomenon." The Register, in which this entry is made begins on June 24, 1666, and contains, with many intermissions, the observations made by Locke, in Oxford and London, up to June 30, 1683, on the readings of the "thermoscope," the "baroscope," and the "hygroscope," together with the direction of the wind and the state of the weather. It not only affords valuable evidence of Locke's whereabouts at different times, but also shows the interest which he took in physical research. In the early summer of 1667, Locke appears to have taken up his residence with Lord Ashley in London, and "from that time," according to Lady Masham, "he was with my Lord Ashley as a man at home, and lived in that family much esteemed, not only by my lord, but by all the friends of the family." His residence in Lord Ashley's family was, however, probably broken by occasional visits to Oxford. To this period of Locke's life may be assigned the unpublished _Essay concerning Toleration_, which, with so much other valuable matter, is now for the first time accessible to the general reader in Mr. Fox-Bourne's _Life_. This _Essay_, it is not improbable, was written at the suggestion, or for the guidance of Lord Ashley, and so may have been widely circulated amongst the advocates of "toleration" and "comprehension"--words which were at that time in the mouth of every man who took any interest in religion or politics. As I shall have to speak expressly of the published _Letters on Toleration_, which were written about twenty years later, and which contain substantially the same views as this earlier _Essay_, I shall not here detain the reader further than by giving him the general conclusions at which Locke had now arrived. These may be stated summarily under three heads: first, "all speculative opinions and religious worship have a clear title to universal toleration," and in these every man may use "a perfect uncontrollable liberty, without any guilt or sin at all, provided always that it be all done sincerely and out of conscience to God, according to the best of his knowledge and persuasion;" secondly, "there are some opinions and actions which are in their natural tendency absolutely destructive to human society--as, that faith may be broken with heretics; that one is bound to broach and propagate any