406 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 



of English experimental science had not yet, however, 

 been felt. It was to come, if at all, from without, and 

 from without it came, and from a quarter least of all to be 

 anticipated. For the first time in the history of mankind 

 Fashion and Science joined hands. All the benefits which 

 the stern goddess had offered had been as nothing; all her 

 struggles to stir the inertia of the load had been futile; but 

 now a beckon and a nod from the fickle and laughing 

 dame, a touch of the finger, and the mountain moved. 



The Society applied to Charles for a charter. There 

 was no reason why so devoted a band of Royalists should 

 not thus be rewarded, especially as doing so involved no 

 settlement of old pecuniary scores for aid and comfort. 

 So the King not only converted it into the Royal Society, 

 but gave to it, what was far more immediately valuable 

 than the charter, the light of his kingly countenance. 

 The result upon the fortunes of the new philosophy was 

 magical. 1 The Court, in lieu of baiting Puritans, place 

 jobbing, flirting and gambling, fell to discussing the pneu- 

 matic engine, the ponderation of the air, blood transfusion, 

 and the variation of the compass. My Lord Keeper Guil- 

 ford thriftily had barometers constructed for sale in Lon- 

 don, and united with my Lord Chief Justice Hale in mak- 

 ing suitors wait pending the production of obiter dicta on 

 hydrostatics. Prince Rupert invented mezzo-tinto engrav- 

 ing, and set the willingly admiring courtiers to breaking 

 off the tails of the wonderful little drops of glass which he 

 had brought into England, to see them fly to pieces. Even 

 Buckingham found time, amid the pressing claims of wine, 

 women, the gaming table and the stage, to dabble in chem- 

 istry. If one dropped in at Will's it was to find men of 

 fashion discussing telescopes and the Vacuo Boyleano. 

 My lady, in her boudoir, chattered of the shining phos- 

 phorus from Germany, or went in her coach and six to 

 visit the Gresham curiosities, and u broke forth into cries 

 of delight at finding that a magnet really attracted a needle, 



1 Macaulay: Hist, of England, Chap. iii. 



