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there a few old-fashioned men unleavened by the Baconian spirit ; 

 and one Shropshire clergyman wrote a tract to denoimce the 

 Royal Society's making experiments in new directions, instead 

 of studying the wise ancients. Nor were there wanting those 

 who supposed the study of natural history to be irreligious ; but 

 the adhesion of several Bishops and the direct patronage of the 

 King soon destroyed this belief. What was objected to was not 

 the study of natural history in itself, but the original researches 

 made, and the avowed intentions of discovering novelties. The 

 objectors were, however, few, and soon heard of no more, and 

 the romantic dream of Bacon, embodied in his " New Atlantis," 

 was, in efiect, realised. There was in England a Solomon's House, 

 with Merchants of Light, Depredators, Lamps, and Pioneers, 

 endeavouring to discover the secrets of Nature, and make them 

 of practical advantage. Also they understood their task 

 much better than Bacon did. What seems so obvious to us was 

 a romantic dream in Bacon's days, and to his contemporaries it 

 must have seemed childishly trivial ; the maintenance of scientific 

 experimenters and discoverers would to them have been not only 

 a dream, but they could not have realised the advantages of such 

 a course. The popularity of Bacon's philosophical works had 

 changed men's minds, had made the Royal Society possible and 

 successful. 



Giving an account of the state which Science had attained 

 at the time of Newton's first discoveries, Mr. Davey said that 

 Copernicus had published his argument for the earth's motion in 

 a circle round the sun in 1543 ; but scarcely any declared them- 

 selves convinced for a hundred years. Kepler had shown that 

 the orbit was not circular, but elliptic ; and Galileo, by using the 

 newly-invented telescope, had found that -Jupiter had satellites, 

 the moon an uneven surface, and Venus phases. Many denied 

 the existence of such novelties ; one young man had seen spots 

 in the sun, but his superior reproved him, saying, " I have read 

 the works of Aristotle for many years, but never found any men- 

 tion of spots in the sun ; the spots must have been in your own 

 eyes." Others said they had looked for hours through Galileo's 

 glasses, but saw nothing of his new stars or other discoveries. 

 Such absurdity could obviously not last long. Other students 

 here and there began to follow Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo 

 in appreciating the arguments for the earth's motion ; and by 

 the middle of the 17th century the question was settled in the 

 minds of scientific men. In this same 120 years, a very large 

 increase had been made in the domain of mathematics. Two 

 great inventions, Napier's logarithms and Descartes's algebraic 

 geometry, had enlarged the Science ; and various attempts had 

 been made to calculate curves, with which no progress had been 

 made since Archimedes and Appollonius. Cavalieri, Fermat, 



