Page:The Works of John Locke - 1823 - vol 01.djvu/45

Rh him in considerable difficulties. Many years after all intercourse had, by such treachery, been broken off between them, and when Mr. Locke was one of the lords of trade and plantations, information was brought to him one morning, while he was at breakfast, that a person shabbily dressed requested the honour of speaking to him. Mr. Locke, with the politeness and humanity which were natural to him, immediately ordered him to be admitted; and beheld, to his great astonishment, his false friend, reduced by a life of cunning and extravagance to poverty and distress, and come to solicit his forgiveness, and to implore his assistance. Mr. Locke looked at him for some time very steadfastly, without speaking one word. At length, taking out a fifty-pound note, he presented it to him with the following: remarkable declaration: "Though I sincerely forgive your behaviour to me, yet I must never put it in your power to injure me a second time. Take this trifle, which I give, not as a mark of my former friendship, but as a relief to your present wants, and consign to the service of your necessities, without recollecting how little you deserve it. No reply! It is impossible to regain my good opinion; for know, friendship once injured is for ever lost."

Mr. Locke was naturally very active, and employed himself as much as his health would permit. Sometimes he diverted himself by working in the garden, at which he was very expert. He loved walking; but being prevented by his asthmatic complaint from taking much of that exercise, he used to ride out after dinner, either on horseback or in an open chaise, as he was able to bear it. His bad health occasioned disturbance to no person but himself; and persons might be with him without any other concern than that created by seeing him suffer. He did not differ from others in the article of diet; but his ordinary drink was only water; and this he thought was the cause of his having his life prolonged to such an age, notwithstanding the weakness of his constitution. To the same cause, also, he thought that the preservation of his eye-sight was in a great measure to be attributed; for he could read by candle-light all sorts of books to the last, if they were not of a very small print, and he had never made use of spectacles. He had no other disorder but his asthma, excepting a deafness of six months' continuance about four years before his death. Writing to a friend, while labouring under this affliction, he observed, that since it had entirely deprived him of the pleasures of conversation, "he did not know but it was better to be blind than deaf." Among the honours paid to the memory of this great man, that of queen Caroline, consort of king