4 LAY SERMONS, ESSAYS, AND REVIEWS. [i. 



Sir Francis Bacon (Lord Verulam) in England, hath been much 

 cultivated in Italy, France, Germany, and other parts abroad, as 

 well as with us in England.&quot; 



The learned Dr. Wallis, writing in 1696, narrates in these 

 words, what happened half a century before, or about 1645. 

 The associates met at Oxford, in the rooms of Dr. Wilkins, 

 who was destined to become a bishop ; and subsequently coming 

 together in London, they attracted the notice of the king. And 

 it is a strange evidence of the taste for knowledge which the 

 most obviously worthless of the Stuarts shared with his father 

 and grandfather, that Charles the Second was not content with 

 saying witty things about his philosophers, but did wise things 

 with regard to them. For he not only bestowed upon them 

 such attention as he could spare from his poodles and his 

 mistresses, but, being in his usual state of impecuniosity, begged 

 for them of the Duke of Ormond ; and, that step being without 

 effect, gave them Chelsea College, a charter, and a mace : 

 crowning his favours in the best way they could be crowned, 

 by burdening them no further with royal patronage or state 

 interference. 



Thus it was that the half-dozen young men, studious of the 

 &quot; New Philosophy,&quot; who met in one another s lodgings in Oxford 

 or in London, in the middle of the seventeenth century, grew in 

 numerical and in real strength, until, in its latter part, the 

 &quot; Royal Society for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge &quot; 

 had already become famous, and had accquired a claim upon the 

 veneration of Englishmen, which it has ever since retained, as 

 the principal focus of scientific activity in our islands, and the 

 chief champion of the cause it was formed to support. 



It was by the aid of the Royal Society that Newton published 

 his &quot;Principia.&quot; If all the books in the world, except the 

 Philosophical Transactions, were destroyed, it is safe to say that 

 the foundations of physical science would remain unshaken, and 

 that the vast intellectual progress of the last two centuries would 

 be largely, though incompletely, recorded. Nor have any signs 

 of halting or of decrepitude manifested themselves in our own 



