THE ROYAL SOCIETY. 539 



matters, wrote in his work on the progress of knowledge since 

 the days of Aristotle : " Should these heroes [the F. R. S.] go on 

 as they have happily "begun," he said, " they will fill the world 

 with wonders ; and posterity will find many things that are now 

 rumors verified into practical realities. It may be, some ages 

 hence, a voyage to the southern unknown tracts, yea, possibly, the 

 moon, will not be more strange than one to America. To them 

 that come after us, it may be as ordinary to "buy a pair of wings 

 to fly into remotest regions, as now a pair of boots to ride a jour- 

 ney ; and to confer at the distance of the Indies, by sympathetic 

 conveyances, may be as usual to future times, as to us in a liter- 

 ary correspondence. The restoration of grey hairs to juvenilty, 

 and renewing the exhausted marrow, may at length be effected 

 without a miracle ; and the turning the now comparative desert 

 world into a paradise, may not improbably be expected from late 

 agriculture. Those that judge from the narrowness of former 

 principles and successes will smile at these paradoxical expecta- 

 tions. Antiquity could not have believed the almost incredible 

 force of our cannons, and would have as coldly entertained the 

 wonders of the telescope." Disraeli smiles at these dreams at 

 the dawn of philosophy. "What would he have thought had 

 Glanville prophesied of steamships, railroads, telegraphs, sewing- 

 machines, telephones, and other inventions of the nineteenth 

 century, which were unknown in Disraeli's lifetime ? 



Gold-making was a favorite pursuit in the seventeenth cent- 

 ury with our scientists. Sir Kenelm Digby's devotion to alche- 

 my, which he regarded as science, led him to lavish money on 

 impostors, and seek knowledge from very unlikely sources. He 

 once went in disguise to consult the philosopher Descartes, and, 

 hoping to obtain from him the secret of making durum potdbile, 

 complained that life was too short for the accomplishment of the 

 designs of a scientist. Descartes, though he did not give Digby 

 the recipe for the golden elixir, replied that he had considered 

 that matter ; " to render a man immortal was what he could not 

 promise, but that he was very sure it was possible to lengthen out 

 his life to the period of the patriarchs." Sir Kenelm's well- 

 known weapon, salve, or powder of sympathy, was recommended 

 by him as a valuable remedy, though it was, of course, the most 

 ridiculous quackery. " The wound was never to be brought into 

 contact with the powder, which was merely powdered vitriol. 

 A bandage was to be taken from the wound, immersed in the 

 powder, and kept there till the wound healed." He was a firm 

 believer in astrology, and attributed his happy marriage to the 

 beautiful and talented Yenetia Stanley, after a somewhat pro- 

 tracted courtship, to astrological influences. Digby gave Evelyn, 

 at Paris, in 1651, some water which he " intended for a disolvent 



