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CHAPTER XXIII. 



LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC ASSOCIATIONS. 



FOR a long time after the revival of learning in 

 Europe, men devoted to letters were, in a great 

 measure, insulated with respect to each other. We 

 read, it is true, of a society of learned men, asso- 

 ciated for the purpose of promoting literature and 

 science, as early as the time of Charlemagne $ 

 but the plan appears to have been rude and de- 

 fective. Several others were instituted in Italy, 

 in the sixteenth century; still, however, they seem 

 to have been, both in their formation and effects, 

 much inferior to many which have flourished since. 

 The most enlarged ideas of literary societies seem 

 to have originated with the great Lord Bacon* 

 who, in his New Atalantis, delineated a plan of one 

 more liberal and extensive than had ever before 

 existed. But although his project received little 

 encouragement from his contemporaries, it was 

 destined to produce important effects not long af- 

 terwards. 



In the seventeenth century, the taste for form- 

 ing scientific and literary societies may be said to 

 have commenced its prevalence, and to have 

 gained considerable ground. It was a little after 

 the middle of that century that the two most con-* 

 spicuous associations of the kind in Europe, viz. 

 The Royal Society of Great-Britain, and The Royal 

 Academy of Sciences of France, were formed. 

 The former by Mr. Boyle, Mr. Hooke, and a 

 number of others, who, at that time, held a high 

 station in the philosophical world \ and the latter by 



