ut hiding from his attendants, as he did all his days, the
profoundest impressions which agitated his earnest and heroic soul.

[Sidenote: Sir Isaac Newton and John Locke.]

Among the great men whom he encouraged and rewarded, may be mentioned
the historian Burnet, whom he made Bishop of Salisbury, and Tillotson
and Tennison, whom he elevated to archiepiscopal thrones. Dr. South
and Dr. Bentley also adorned this age of eminent divines. The great
poets of the period were Prior, Dryden, Swift, and Pope, who, however,
are numbered more frequently among the wits of the reign of Anne.
Robert Boyle distinguished himself for experiments in natural science,
and zeal for Christian knowledge; and Christopher Wren for his genius
in architectural art. But the two great lights of this reign were,
doubtless, Sir Isaac Newton and John Locke, to whom the realm of
natural and intellectual philosophy is more indebted than to any other
men of genius from the time of Bacon. The discoveries of Newton are
scarcely without a parallel, and he is generally regarded as the
greatest mathematical intellect that England has produced. To him the
world is indebted for the binomial theorem, discovered at the age of
twenty-two; for the invention of fluxions; for the demonstration of
the law of gravitation; and for the discovery of the different
refrangibility of rays of light. His treatise on Optics and his
_Principia_, in which he brought to light the new theory of the
universe, place him at the head of modern philosophers--on a high
vantage ground, to which none have been elevated, of his age, with the
exception of Leibnitz and Galileo. But his greatest glory was his
modesty, and the splendid tribute he rendered to the truths of
Christianity, whose importance and sublime beauty he was ever most
proud to acknowledge in an age of levity and indifference.

John Locke is a name which almost exclusively belongs to the reign of
William III., and he will also ever be honorably mentioned in the
constellation of the very great geniuses and Christians of the world.
His treatises on Religious Toleration are the most masterly ever
written, while his Essay on the Human Understanding is a great system
of truth, as complete, original, and logical, in the department of
mental science, as was the system of Calvin in the realm of theology.
Locke's Essay has had its enemies and detractors, and, while many
eminent men have dissented from it, it nevertheless remains, o