20 SELECTED ESS A YS FROM LA Y SERMONS 



of the moon, the several phases of Venus and Mercury, the 

 improvement of telescopes and grinding of glasses for that 

 purpose, the weight of air, the possibility or impossibility 

 of vacuities and nature's abhorrence thereof, the Torri- 

 cellian experiment in quicksilver, the descent of hea\y 

 bodies and the degree of acceleration therein, with divers 

 other things of like nature, 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 Verulam) in England, hath been much cultivated 

 in Ital}^, France, Germany, and other parts abroad, as well 

 as with us in England." 



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

 w^ords, what happened half a century before, or 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 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 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 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 fa- 

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

 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- 



