Locke was of a cautious if not timid disposition. This appears from many of his letters, and may be inferred from the anonymous publication of most of his writings. His weak health, the political persecution to which he was exposed during great part of his life, and the discipline to which he was subjected in childhood, which was strict and severe, in some measure account for this failing. His friendships were very steady; witness his close adherence to his patron Shaftesbury. Sydenham’s contemporary and friendly character of Locke is remarkable: he says, in a prefatory letter to one of his works, that “if we consider his genius, his penetrating and exact judgment, and the strictness of his morals, he has scarcely any superior, and few equals now living.” [Illustration: [Reverse of a French Medal of Locke.]] [Illustration: _Engraved by Rob^t. Hart._ SELDEN. _From a Picture attributed to Sir Peter Lely in the Bodleian Library, Oxford._ Under the Superintendance of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. _London, Published by Charles Knight, Ludgate Street._ ] [Illustration] SELDEN. John Selden was born at Salvington, a hamlet of Tarring, near Worthing, in the county of Sussex, December 16, 1584 (O.S.). His father, according to Wood, “was a sufficient plebeian,” who, through some skill in music, obtained as his wife Margaret Baker, a daughter of a knightly family of the county of Kent. The baptism of his eminent son, as well as his own musical talents, are noticed in an existing parish registry in these words: “1584.—Johnne, sonne of John Selden, the minstrell, was baptised the XXX^{th} day of December.” The house in which the family lived was called Lacies, and the estate of the father consisted, in 1606, of eighty-one acres, of the annual value of about twenty-three pounds. John Selden, the son, received his early education at the Free Grammar-School of Chichester. At the age of fourteen he entered at Hart Hall, Oxford. After residing four years at the University, he was admitted, in 1602, a member of Clifford’s Inn, one of the dependencies of the greater inns of court, in which students of law were formerly accustomed to commence their legal education. He removed in May, 1604, to the Inner Temple. His attention appears to have been early drawn to the study of civil and legal history, and antiquities; he did not court the more active business of his profession, and his employment at the bar was limited. In 1607, he prepared for the press his first work, entitled ‘Analectωn Anglo-Britannicωn,’ being a collection of civil and ecclesiastical matters relating to Britain, of a date anterior to the Norman conquest. This was soon followed by three other works of a similar character, and in 1614 he printed his ‘Treatise upon Titles of Honour.’ The last of these works has been considered in our courts of law to be of great