124 SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. FT. in. 



divers other things of like nature, some of which were then 

 but new discoveries, and others not so generally known and 

 embraced as they now 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 

 Italy, France, Germany, and other parts abroad, as well as 

 with us in England.' 



How well we can picture from this account (written in 

 1696), the pleasure which this little group of men, weary of 

 the quarrels and bloodshed of the times, felt in discussing 

 and investigating those laws of nature which seem to bring 

 us into the calm presence of an Almighty Unchanging 

 Power far above the petty wranglings of man ! The Royal 

 Society has become, as I have said, one of the grandest 

 scientific bodies in the world ; but it has probably never 

 held more earnest or enthusiastic meetings than in^he small 

 lodgings at Oxford where it first took its rise in the midst 

 of civil war. 



England was not long the only country which had a 

 scientific society. Italy had already had two in the time of 

 Galileo ^id Torricelli, but they had soon been broken up 

 again. In Germany, the 'Imperial Academy of the Curious 

 in Nature' was founded in 1662 ; and in 1666 the famous 

 ' French Academy of Sciences' was legally established by 

 the French Government in Paris. 



All these societies were a great help in spreading the 

 knowledge of scientific discoveries. Men who before were 

 unable to publish what they knew, now sent or read their 

 papers to those who could understand and appreciate them. 

 The Royal Society began from the first to publish useful 

 memoirs in their Philosophical Transactions; and in 1669 

 we find them bringing out the works of an Italian anatomist, 



