isolated impulse. On all sides men were rising up eager to devote their best energies to physical inquiries; and society, whether fanatic or frivolous, animated them by its curiosity and rewarded them with its applause. The Long Parliament appointed, July 20, 1653, a committee "for the advancement of learning." Evelyn drew up, in 1059, an elaborate scheme for the foundation of a "philosophic-mathematic college." Cowley dismounted for a moment from his "Pindaric Pegasus" to make a "proposition for the advancement of experimental philosophy," whereby "the lost inventions, and, as it were, drowned lands of the ancients, should be recovered; all things of nature, delivered to us by former ages, weighed, examined, and proved; all arts which we now have improved, and others which we yet have not, discovered."[1] Samuel Pepys was scarcely less interested in astronomy than in the playhouse, and gossiped with as much zest about the experiments at Gresham College as about the pageants of Whitehall. Charles I. thought of founding a scientific repository at Vauxhall; the Earl of Worcester actually bought tenements there for the purpose; Sir William Petty recommended a comprehensive plan for the "interpretation of nature whereof there is so little, and that so bad, extant in the world." This design, "breathed after" (as Evelyn says) by so many, was, at least in part, realized by the foundation of the Royal Society.
This celebrated institution had its origin in the meetings of the "Invisible College," of which Robert Boyle, John Wallis, and Dr. Wilkins—afterward Bishop of Chester and author of a novel project for traveling to the moon—were members. It was in 1045 that these, with several other no less eminent men, began to seek in the so-called "new philosophy" a refuge from the turmoil of civil war, their scientific symposia being sheltered either in Gresham College or the less dignified retreat of the "Bull's Head" tavern, in Cheapside. Their fortunes were destined to expand. Fifteen years later they constituted themselves a society for the promotion of experimental science, and were incorporated by royal charter, July 15, 1602.
Thus the "Solomon's House" of the "New Atlantis" received a "local habitation" in Bishopsgate Street, and' Bacon's splendid fable was brought to the test of actual, if only partial, embodiment in a living institution. Nothing can be more evident than the enormous influence exercised by the "incomparable Verulam" over the founders of the Royal Society. Not only were his praises celebrated among them, but his precepts were, as far as possible, obeyed by them. Their foreign correspondents acted the part of the "merchants of light" appointed to enrich the Island of Bensalem with the knowledge of other lands. The "mystery-men," "dowry-men," "pioneers," and "compilers" of Solomon's House had all their representatives among the "learned knot," who designed
- ↑ Weld, "History of the Royal Society," vol. 1., p. 51.
