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CHAPTER XXIII. 



LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC ASS0CUTIQN5. 



-t* OR 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, 

 associated 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 institufed in Italy, 

 in the si^^teenth 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 Ncxv 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 eliects not long 

 afterward. 



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 

 conspicuous associations of the kind in Europe, 

 Tiie Boval Society of Great Britain, and The Royal 



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