44 



TO THE READER. 



whoever he be, who, truly weighing the noble and universal consequence 

 of so high an enterprize, shall at last free it of these reproaches, and 

 either set it above the reach of envy, or convert it to emulation. 



This were indeed to consult an honest fame, and to embalm the 

 memory of a greater name than any has yet appeared amongst all the 

 benefactors of the disputing sects. Let it suffice to affirm, that, next to 

 the propagation of our most Holy Faith and its appendants, (nor can his 

 Majesty or the nation build their fame on a more lasting or a more 

 glorious monument, the propagation of learning and useful arts having 

 always survived the triumphs of the proudest conquerors and spillers of 

 blood,) Princes have been more renowned for their civility to arts and 

 letters, than to all their sanguinary victories, subduing provinces, and 

 making those brutish desolations in the world to feed a savage and vile 

 ambition. 



Is not our Royal Founder already panegyrized by all the universities, 

 academists, learned persons^ divers princes, ambassadors, and illustrious 

 men from abroad ? Witness the many accurate treatises and volumes on 

 the most curious and useful subjects, medicinal, mathematical, and me- 

 chanicalj dedicated to his Majesty as Founder, to the President, and to 

 the Society, by the greatest wits and most profoundly knowing of the 

 European world, celebrating their institution and proceedings : Witness 

 the daily submissions and solemn appeals of the most learned strangers to 

 their suffi'ages, as to the most able, candid, and impartial judges : Witness 

 the letters and correspondences from most part of the habitable earth. 

 East and West-Indies, and almost from Pole to Pole ; besides what they 

 have received from the very mouths of divers professors, public ministers, 

 great travellers, noblemen, and persons of the highest quality, who have 

 not only frequented the assembly, but desired to be incorporated and 

 inscribed into their number ; so little has his Majesty or the kingdom 

 been diminished in their reputation by the Royal Society, to the reproach 

 of our sordid adversaries. 



Never had the Republic of Letters so learned and universal a corres- 

 pondence as has been procured and promoted by this Society alone, as 

 not only the casual transactions of several years, filled with instances of the 

 most curious and useful observations, make appear ; but, as I said, the 

 many nuncupatory epistles to be seen in the fronts of so many learned 

 volumes. There it is you will find Charles the Second placed among the 



