His opinions are grounded upon the systems of Des Cartes and of Locke; and in supporting them he considered that he was rendering service not only to science but religion. "As we have shewn (he says) the doctrine of matter or corporeal substance to have been the main pillar and support of scepticism, so likewise upon the same foundation have been raised all the impious schemes of atheism and irreligion. Nay, so great a difficulty hath it been thought, to conceive matter produced out of nothing, that the most celebrated among the ancient philosophers, even of those who maintained the being of a God, have thought matter to be uncreated, and co-eternal with him. How great a friend material substance hath been to Atheists in all ages, were needless to relate. All their monstrous systems have so visible and necessary a dependance on it, that when this corner-stone is once removed, the whole fabric cannot choose but fall to the ground; insomuch that it is no longer worth while to bestow a particular consideration on the absurdities of every wretched sect of Atheists."

His expectation of the advantages of his opinions was exceedingly fallacious; for they have proved to be scarcely innocent. By the same reasoning, which he has employed to deny the existence of the material world, David Hume has undertaken to dispute the existence of spirits, and to establish the reveries of universal scepticism. According to the joint decisions of the two philosophers (the one a Christian, and the other an infidel) the common sense of mankind from the beginning of the world has been deceived; and instead of the beautiful fabric of material things, and the well-arranged faculties of spiritual intelligences, nothing exists but a disorderly congeries of ideas and impressions.

In 1712, Berkeley published the substance of three discourses which he had delivered in the College chapel at He is an Dublin, upon the subject of Passive Obedience. unqualified advocate of the doctrine, contending that under the most grievous oppression all resistance is unjustifiable; and he endeavours to support his opinion, not by the authority of Scripture, but by principles of reason, and the law of nature. His undiscriminating train of argument gave occasion to Lord Galway to accuse him of being a Jacobite; a charge which, till it was denied by his friend Mr. Molyneux, threatened to obstruct from him the cur

rent of royal favour. His sentiments indeed inculcate such unlimited submission to all rulers, that it is impossible to suppose him hostile to any government of which he might be a subject.

His Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous appeared in February, 1713, and were intended to explain and support his paradoxical system of metaphysics. All that a brilliant fancy and subtile ingenuity could invent in favour of his hypothesis, he has skilfully combined; but notwithstanding the apparent force of his arguments, they produce in the mind of the reader far more surprise than conviction.

Through the recommendation of Dean Swift he was appointed chaplain to the earl of Peterborough, and in November, 1713, set out for Italy, in the retinue of his Lordship, who was despatched ambassador to the king of Sicily. The journey, if we may judge by his letters, gave him great gratification; and in writing to Mr. Pope, he assures him, that if he would "know lightsome days, warm suns, and blue skies, he must come to Italy; and to enable a man to describe rocks and precipices, it is absolutely necessary that he pass the Alps." His time was chiefly spent at Leghorn, where he was left with the greatest part of the Ambassador's family. In August, 1714, he returned with his Lordship to England.

He soon revisited the continent, in the capacity of tutor to Mr. Ashe, son of the bishop of Clogher; and as his tour was prolonged to a period of more than four years, he had ample opportunity of gratifying the liberal curiosity of a learned mind. By a visit which he paid to Malebranche at Paris, he is supposed to have been the innocent cause of accelerating that philosopher's death; for Berkeley's metaphysical opinions having come into discussion, the Frenchman, who was suffering with an inflammation. of the lungs, indulged in a vehemence of argument, unsuited to his strength, and aggravated his complaint to a degree that in a short time proved fatal to him.

The public would probably have enjoyed some entertaining memorial of Berkeley's travels in Sicily, if his papers upon the natural history of that country had not been unfortunately lost in his voyage to Naples. The following letters, the first addressed to Mr. Pope, and the second to Dr. Arbuthnot, are the principal records that have survived, of his industry abroad:

"Naples, October 22, 1717.

"I have long had it in my thoughts to trouble you with a letter, but was discouraged for want of something that I could think worth sending fifteen hundred miles. Italy is such an exhausted subject, that I dare say you would easily forgive my saying nothing of it; and the imagination of a poet is a thing so nice and delicate, that it is no easy matter to find out images capable of giving pleasure to one of the few, who (in any age) have come up to that character. I am nevertheless lately returned from an island, where I passed three or four months; which, were it set out in its true colours, might, methinks, amuse you agreeably enough for a minute or two. The island Inarime* is an epitome of the whole earth, containing within the compass of eighteen miles a wonderful variety of hills, vales, rugged rocks, fruitful plains, and barren mountains, all thrown together in a most romantic confusion. The air is in the hottest season constantly refreshed by cool breezes from the sea.

The vales produce excellent wheat and Indian corn, but are mostly covered with vineyards, intermixed with fruit trees: besides the common kinds, as cherries, apricots, peaches, &c. they produce oranges, limes, almonds, pomegranates, figs, water-melons, and many other fruits unknown to our climates, which lie every where open to the passengers. The hills are the greater part covered to the top with vines, some with chesnut groves, and others with thickets of myrtle and lentiscus. The fields in the northern side are divided by hedge-rows of myrtle. Several fountains and rivulets add to the beauty of this landscape, which is likewise set off by the variety of some barren spots and naked rocks. But that which crowns the scene is a large mountain, rising out of the middle of the island (once a terrible volcano, by the ancients called Mons Epomeus): its lower parts are adorned with vines and other fruits: the middle affords pasture to flocks of goats and sheep: and the top is a sandy pointed rock, from which you have the finest prospect in the world, surveying at one view, besides several pleasant islands lying at your feet, a tract of Italy about three hundred miles in length, from the promontory of Antium to the Cape of Palinurus; the greater part of which hath been sung by Homer and Virgil, as making a

The modern Ischia.

considerable part of the travels and adventures of their two heroes. The islands Caprea, Prochyta, and Parthenope, together with Cajeta, Cumæ, Monte Miseno, the habitations of Circe, the Syrens, and the Læstrigones, the bay of Naples, the promontory of Minerva, and the whole Campagna Felice, make but a part of this noble landscape; which would demand an imagination as warm, and numbers as flowing as your own, to describe it. The inhabitants of this delicious isle, as they are without riches and honours, so they are without the vices and follies that attend them; and were they but as much strangers to revenge as they are to avarice and ambition, they might in fact answer the poetical notions of the golden age. But they have got, as an alloy to their happiness, an ill habit of murdering one another on slight offences: We had an instance of this the second night after our arrival, a youth of eighteen being shot dead by our door; and yet by the sole secret of minding our own business, we found a means of living securely among these dangerous people.

"Would you know how we pass the time at Naples? Our chief entertainment is the devotion of our neighbours: besides the gaiety of their churches (where folks go to see what they call una bella devotione, i. e. a sort of religious opera), they make fire-works almost every week out of devotion; the streets are often hung with arras out of devotion, and (what is still more strange) the ladies invite gentlemen to their houses, and treat them with music and sweetmeats, out of devotion: in a word, were it not for this devotion of its inhabitants, Naples would have little else to recommend it besides the air and situation. Learning is in no very thriving state here, as indeed no where else in Italy; however, among many pretenders, some men of taste are to be met with. A friend of mine told me not long since, that being to visit Salvini at Florence, he found him reading your Homer, and he liked the notes extremely, and could find no other fault with the version, but that it approached too near a paraphrase; which shews him not to be sufficiently acquainted with our language. I wish you health to go on with that noble work; and when you have that, I need not wish you success. You will do me the justice to believe, that whatever relates to your welfare is sincerely wished by, Yours, &c."

"April 17, 1717.

"With much difficulty I reached the top of Mount Vesuvius, in which I saw a vast aperture full of smoke, which hindered the seeing its depth and figure. I heard within that horrid gulf certain odd sounds, which seemed to proceed from the body of the mountain; a sort of murmuring, sighing, throbbing, churning, dashing (as it were) of waves, and between whiles a noise like that of thunder or cannon, which was constantly attended with a clattering like that of tiles falling from the tops of houses on the streets. Sometimes, as the wind changed, the smoke grew thinner, discovering a very ruddy flame, and the jaws of the pan or crater streaked with red and several shades of yellow. After an hour's stay, the smoke, being moved by the wind, gave us short and partial prospects of the great hollow, in the flat bottom of which I could discern two furnaces almost contiguous; that on the left, seeming about three yards in diameter, glowed with red flame, and threw up red-hot stones with a hideous noise, which as they fell back, caused the forementioned clattering. May 8, in the morning, I ascended to the top of Vesuvius a second time, and found a different face of things. The smoke ascending upright gave a full prospect of the crater, which, as I could judge, is about a mile in circumference, and a hundred yards deep. A conical mount had been formed since my last visit, in the middle of the bottom; this mount, I could see, was made of the stones thrown up and fallen back again into the crater. In this new hill remained the two mounts or furnaces already mentioned: that on our left was in the vertex of the hill which it had formed round it, and raged more violently than before, throwing up every three or four minutes, with a dreadful bellowing, a vast number of red-hot stones, sometimes in appearance above a thousand, and at least three thousand feet higher than my head, as I stood upon the brink; but there being little or no wind, they fell back perpendicularly into the crater, increasing the conical hill. The other mouth to the right I was lower in the side of the same new-formed hill. I could discern it to be filled with red-hot liquid matter, like that in the furnace of a glass-house, which raged and wrought as the waves of the seas, causing a short abrupt noise like what may be imagined to proceed from a sea of quicksilver dashing among uneven rocks. This stuff would sometimes