CHAPTER XIV. 



FOUR years after the foundation of the English Royal 

 Society, Colbert, the astute and far-seeing minister of 

 Louis XIV, perceived in the gatherings of philosophers 

 which were still held at the houses of Thevenot and others, 

 the possible nucleus of a great national institution, capa- 

 ble of advancing science and the industries of France. 

 The Royal Academy of Sciences was therefore duly estab- 

 lished by royal command in 1666, and with princely gen- 

 erosity, intended to be in marked contrast with what 

 English Charles did not do, Louis endowed the new 

 body with ample funds for its future experiments, and 

 added pensions and rewards for deserving members. 

 Thus equipped, the philosophers had nothing to do but 

 startle the world with the magnitude and originality of 

 their discoveries, to the making of which they might now 

 devote themselves without troubling as to cost. 



At first they proceeded slowly. The original members 

 were chiefly mathematicians, and experiments can hardly 

 be said to have begun until the physicists were admitted. 

 Then they went at it with a will. They experimented in 

 concert, with results fully equal to such as might reason- 

 ably be expected to follow the production of Shakespeare's 

 tragedy with a chorus of simultaneous if not concordant 

 Hamlets. There was no gathering in a room and read- 

 ing one another asleep with interminable papers, suitable 

 only for the phlegmatic plodding English. The sessions 

 were held in the laboratory. Nature should be made to 

 yield up her secrets by the combined efforts of several 

 brains attacking her stronghold simultaneously, like the 

 concentrated fire of a battery. They needed no Charles to 

 suggest subjects and spur them on. Indeed, when Louis 



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