436 Proceedings of the Roi/al Irish Academy. 



The further history of the French Academy does not now concern us. 

 Its general frame— a President and Chancellor, who were frequently changed, 

 and a ' perpetual ' Secretary, who held his ofifice for life — was very common in 

 the older academies. It secured two great objects — (1) the raising the credit 

 of the Academy by associating many distinguished men with its name ; (2) the 

 securing of continuity in its ordinary policy by means of a trusty permanent 

 official. If it suffered from State patronage, it at least gained a safe income, 

 and we wonder that for a long time it was not provided with a fixed domicile, 

 but in this it encountered a difficulty common to the progress of many other 

 similar foundations, which started from private societies. 



The history of the English Roycd Society lies before you in the handsome 

 volume re-edited in this very year, their 250th anniversary, by Sir Archibald 

 Geikie. Here, again, we have the usual cii'cumstances — a club of private 

 persons deeply interested in positive science, meeting together to make and 

 record experiments, and discuss the discoveries to which they might lead. 

 There was the same desire to escape publicity, and to give themselves fancy 

 names. The club was known as The Invisible College. 



It is very likely that Bacon's New Atlantis, first published in 1637, and 

 very popular in the succeeding years, acted as a stimulus, though his vast 

 scheme was far more like that of the original Lynxes, and those we shall 

 find in Germany. Yet I have little doubt that the numerous Academies of 

 Italy must have been as well known to some of these men as was the 

 della Crusca to the French. During the stormy days of the middle seventeenth 

 century one of them, quoted by Geikie, says they onlymet "for the satisfaction 

 of breathing a freer air, of conversing together in quiet, without being engaged 

 in the passions and the madness of that dismal age." The mathematician 

 John Wallis gives a list of these men who met about 1645 ; and it is remark- 

 able that he mentions Theodore Haak, a German from the Palatinate, as 

 first suggesting the idea. Their inquiries were confined to science pure 

 and applied, especially to that which was experimental, and they pointed 

 to Bacon and Galileo as their precursors. Eobert Boyle was the leading 

 spirit among many eminent thinkers, including William Petty and 

 Christopher Wren. About 1658 they began to meet in large rooms in the 

 Gresham College, and presently to think of forming a definite Society. The 

 poet Cowley was indeed one of them, but not as a noet. He had published a 

 tract on the advancement of Experimental Philosophy. Then, just as in the 

 case of the French Academy and Eichelieu, King Charles II heard of it, and 

 signified he would become its patron. The English king's patronage was not 

 so irksome as that of the ambitious cardinal had been to the French Academy, 

 ihe king was rather bent on amusing himself, though he had with him Tverf 



