ment of chaplain and secretary to the famous Earl of Peterborough, who was sent out embassador to the king of Sicily, and the Italian States in 1713. On his return to England in August 1714, he found his former friends, the ministers of Queen Anne, now in disgrace; and men of opposite principles forming the administration of George I. All hopes of preferment were therefore at an end; and he therefore willingly embraced the offer of accompanying Mr. Ashe, the son of the Bishop of Clogher, in a tour through Europe. Soon after his return to England in 1714 he had a dangerous fever, which gave occasion to Dr. Arbuthnot to indulge a little pleasantry on Berkeley's system:—Poor philosopher Berkeley," says he to his friend Swift, "has now the idea of health, which was very hard to produce in him; for he had an idea of a strange fever on him so strong, that is was very hard to destroy it by introducing a contrary one."
Mr. Berkeley spent altogether four years on his tour, and besides performing what is called the grand tour, he visited countries less frequented. He stopped some time on his way to Paris, and availed himself of the leisure he had there, to pay a visit to his rival in metaphysical speculations, the celebrated Père Malebranche. He found this ingenious father in the cell of his own convent, cooking in a pipkin a medicine for a disorder with which he was troubled—an inflammation on the lungs. The conversation turning on our author's system, of which the French philosopher had received an account from a translation which had lately been publisbed, a discussion took place between them, of which the result was fatal to Père Malebranche. In the course of the debate, he became heated; raised his voice to an unnatural elevation, and gave in to that violent gesticulation and impetuosity, so natural to Frenchmen; the consequence of which was, an increase of his disorder, which carried him off in a few days.
From Apulia Mr. Berkeley wrote an account of the
