ON IMPROVING NATURAL KNOWLEDGE 19 



And one may picture to one's self how harmoniously the 

 holy cursing of the Puritan of that day would have chimed 

 in with the unholy cursing and the crackling wit of the 

 Rochesters and Sedleys, and with the revilings of the politi- 

 cal fanatics, if my imaginary plain dealer had gone on to 

 say that, if the return of such misfortunes were ever rendered 

 impossible, it would not be in virtue of the victory of the 

 faith of Laud, or of that of Milton; and, as little, by the 

 triumph of republicanism, as by that of monarchy. But 

 that the one thing needful for compassing this end was, 

 that the people of England should second the efforts of an 

 insignificant corporation, the establishment of which, a 

 few years before the epoch of the great plague and the great 

 fire, had been as little noticed, as they were conspicuous. 



Some twenty years before the outbreak of the plague a 

 few calm and thoughtful students banded themselves to- 

 gether for the purpose, as they phrased it, of "improving 

 natural knowledge." The ends they proposed to attain 

 cannot be stated more clearly than in the words of one of 

 the founders of the organisation: — 



" Our business was (precluding matters of theology and 

 state affairs) to discourse and consider of philosophical 

 enquirers, and such as related thereunto: — as Physick, Anat- 

 omy, Geometry, Astronomy, Navigation, Statieks, Magnet- 

 icks, Chymicks, Mechanicks,and Natural Experiments; with 

 the state of these studies and their cultivation at home and 

 abroad. We then discoursed of the circulation of the blood, 

 the valves in the veins, the vena^ lacteas, the lymphatic 

 vessels, the Copernican hypothesis, the nature of comets 

 and new stars, the satellites of Jupiter, the oval shape (as 

 it then appeared) of Saturn, the spots on the sun and its 

 turning on its own axis, the inequalities and selenography 



