Improving Natural Knowledge 31 



and grinding of glasses for that purpose, the weight of 

 air, the possibility or impossibility of vacuities and nature's 

 abhorrence thereof, the Torricellian experiment 'in quick- 

 silver, the descent of heavy bodies and the degree of 

 acceleration therein, with divers other things of like na- 5 

 ture, some of which were then but new discoveries, and 

 others not so generally known and embraced as now they 

 are; with other things appertaining to what hath been 

 called the ' New Philosophy,' which, from the times of 

 Galileo at Florence, and Sir Francis Bacon (Lord 10 

 Verulam) in England, hath been much cultivated in Italy, 

 France, Germany, and other parts abroad, as well as with 

 us in England." 



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

 these words, what happened half a century before, or 15 

 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 at- 

 tracted the notice of the king. And it is a strange evidence 

 of the taste for knowledge which the most obviously worth- 20 

 less 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 25 

 and his mistresses, but, being in his usual state of im- 

 pecuniosity, 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 favors 

 in the best way they could be crowned, by burdening 30 

 them no further with royal patronage or state interference. 



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

 of the " New Philosophy," who met in one another's lodg- 

 ings in Oxford or in London, in the middle of the seven- 



