552 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ters influenced, his mind at every moment, and is apparent in 

 many of his treatises on several 'cosmical' subjects which deeply 

 interested him ; but his scientific convictions, formed on adequate 

 grounds, and on any subject-matter, were immovable. It is 

 probable that the greatest service he did to his country and to 

 mankind was by kindling in the minds of his contemporaries an 

 enthusiasm for science, a desire to explore and know Nature, in 

 those turbulent and disastrous days when Wilkins's and Wallis's 

 papers were burned by the mob, Harvey's anatomical dissections 

 destroyed, and Gresham College turned into barracks. In his day 

 he, more than almost any other man, kept alive the torch which 

 kindled the undying fire of the Royal Society/' 



Bishop Burnet, a contemporary and a man of the court, says : 

 " His knowledge was of so vast an extent that, if it were not for 

 the variety of vouchers, in their several sorts, I should be afraid 

 to say all I know." After referring to his knowledge on theologi- 

 cal matters, the bishop continues : " He ran the whole compass of 

 the mathematical sciences, and, though he did not set himself to 

 spring new game, yet he knew even the abstrusest parts of geom- 

 etry ; geography, in the several parts of it that related to naviga- 

 tion or travelling ; history and books of travel were his diversions. 

 He went, very nearly, through all the parts of physic ; only the 

 tenderness of his nature made him less able to endure the exact- 

 ness of anatomical dissections, especially of living animals, though 

 he knew those to be the most instructing ; but, for the history of 

 Nature, ancient and modern, of the productions of all countries, 

 of the virtues and improvements of plants, of ores and minerals, 

 and all the varieties in them, he was by much, by very much, the 

 readiest and t]j.e perfectest I ever knew, in the greatest compass, 

 and with the truest exactness. This put him in the way of mak- 

 ing all that vast variety of experiments, beyond any man, as far 

 as we know, that ever lived. And in these, as he made a great 

 progress in new discoveries, so he used so nice a strictness, and 

 delivered them with so scrupulous a truth, that all who have ex- 

 amined them have found how safely the world may depend upon 

 them. But his peculiar and favorite study was chemistry, in 

 which he engaged with none of those ravenous and ambitious de- 

 signs that draw many into them. His design was only to find out 

 Nature ; to see into what principles things might be resolved, and 

 of what they were compounded, and to prepare good medicaments 

 for the bodies of men." 



Of Boyle's scientific works, the earliest was New Experiments, 

 Physico-mechanical, touching the Spring of Air and its Effects, 

 published in 1660. It was followed, in 1662, by The Sceptical 

 Chemist, which was afterward reprinted, with additions. In 1663 

 he published the first part, and in 1671 the second part, of Consid- 



