410 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 



not the dissolute, prevaricating, pleasure-loving monarch, 

 whose reign reduced England to the lowest political 

 level she has touched in modern times, but rather the 

 eager student who vied in making experiments with the 

 other members of the Society, and who directed the influ- 

 ence of his great position toward the promotion of knowl- 

 edge and research with a vigorous enthusiasm such as the 

 world had never seen before, and very seldom since, in the 

 occupant of a throne. 



Meanwhile, events happened which, although disastrous 

 to the community in general, tended to advance the new 

 Society and create for it augmented popular interest. The 

 frightful epidemic of plague of 1665, in London, followed 

 by the great fire of 1666, caused all classes to turn to the 

 Royal Society for advice looking to the prevention of such 

 scourges and the rebuilding of the devastated town: this 

 time seriously and earnestly, and not a la mode. And the 

 Society rose to the occasion, and investigated building ma- 

 terials and new modes of construction, roadmaking and 

 the laying out of streets, together with ways and means 

 of destroying infection, and specifics against the dread 

 disease. 



Its enthusiasm matched that of its royal patron. " The 

 Fellows set to work to prove all things that they might 

 hold fast that which was good," 1 remarks Professor De 

 Morgan, satirically, forgetting that this was the first in- 

 stitution in which the idea of progress was distinctly em- 

 bodied. 2 True, they considered whether sprats were young 

 herrings; whether a spider would stay within a circle of 

 powdered unicorn's horn (which it would not); whether 

 barnacles turned into geese; whether diamonds grew in 

 their beds like oysters; and if one should choose to select 

 further absurdities, it would not be difficult to make their 

 proceedings appear grotesque. But this is not only de- 



*De Morgan: A Budget of Paradoxes. London, 1872. 

 



2 Buckle: Hist, of Civilization. N. Y., 1877, * 26 9- 



