from the grocer's shop at Exeter, and whose future eminence he must now have pretty clearly foreseen. A few days after King left Oates, he solemnly committed to him by letter the care of Frank Masham. "It is my earnest request to you to take care of the youngest son of Sir Francis and Lady Masham in all his concerns, as if he were your brother. Take care to make him a good, an honest, and an upright man. I have left my directions with him to follow your advice, and I know he will do it; for he never refused to do what I told him was fit." Then, turning to King himself, he says, "I wish you all manner of prosperity in this world, and the everlasting happiness of the world to come. That I loved you, I think you are convinced." Peter King certainly executed the dying request of his cousin, so far as Frank Masham's material interests were concerned. Soon after he became Lord Chancellor, Frank Masham was appointed to the newly constituted office of Accountant-General in the Court of Chancery, a lucrative post, conferring the same status as a Mastership. Locke retained his faculties and his cheerfulness to the last; but he grew gradually weaker day by day. "Few people," says Lady Masham, "do so sensibly see death approach them as he did." A few days before his death he received the sacrament from the parish minister, professing his perfect charity with all men, and his "sincere communion with the whole Church of Christ, by whatever name Christ's followers call themselves." In the last hours he talked much with the Mashams about their eternal concerns. As for himself he had lived long enough, and enjoyed a happy life; but he looked forward to a better. At length, on the afternoon of the 28th of October, the spirit left him, and the earthly tabernacle was dissolved. His body is buried in the churchyard of High Laver, in a pleasant spot on the south side of the church. The Latin epitaph on the wall above the tomb was written by himself. It tells us that he had lived content with his own insignificance: that, brought up among letters, he had advanced just so far as to make an acceptable offering to truth alone: if the traveller wanted an example of good life, he would find one in the Gospel; if of vice, would that he could find one nowhere; if of mortality, there and everywhere. "His death," says Lady Masham, "was, like his life, truly pious, yet natural, easy, and unaffected; nor can time, I think, ever produce a more eminent example of reason and religion than he was, living and dying." CHAPTER VIII. ESSAY ON THE HUMAN UNDERSTANDING.