1 6 SELECTIONS FROM HUXLEY 



who was destined to become a bishop ; and subsequently com- 

 ing 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 

 5 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 



10 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 favors in the best way 

 they could be crowned, by burdening them no further with 

 royal patronage or state interference. 



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

 "New Philosophy," who met in one another's lodgings in Ox- 

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

 grew in numerical and in real strength, until, in its latter 

 part, the " Royal Society for the Improvement of Natural 



20 Knowledge" had already become famous, and had acquired 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. 



25 It was by the aid of the Royal Society that Newton pub- 

 lished his "Principia." 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 



30 two centuries would be largely, though incompletely, recorded. 

 Nor have any signs of halting or of decrepitude manifested 

 themselves in our own times. As in Dr. Wallis's days, so in 

 these, "our business is, precluding theology and state affairs, 

 to discourse and consider of philosophical enquiries." But 



