ministry at Sedan under Andrew Melville, and also at Leyden and Oxford. A great advocate of Evangelical unity, he was continually employed on semi-religious embassies. Recently ordered out of her country by Christina, Queen of Sweden, he was now in London without any definite occupation. Two years later he obtained the post of Keeper of the books, medals, and manuscripts of St. James.
John Beale, afterwards rector of Yeovil in Somersetshire, and chaplain to Charles I., was, like Hartlib, an agricultural enthusiast, and wrote, among other things, Aphorisms concerning Cider. Hartlib, writing to Boyle in 1658, says of him: “There is not the like man in the whole island nor in the continent beyond the seas so far as I know it I mean that could be made more universally use of to good to all, as I in some measure know and could direct.”
John Wilkins, afterwards Bishop of Chester, was ready to entertain any absurdity as long as its aim was philanthropic. He was the author of some curious works, including Discovery of a New World (1638), a description of communication with the moon by means of flying-machines, and Mercury, or the secret and swift messenger, showing how a man may with privacy and speed communicate his thoughts to a friend at any distance.
Last comes Dr. John Pell, a mathematician of no mean order. He had published his Commentationes in Cosmographiam Alstedii in 1631, and had doubtless many a conversation with Comenius about the character and parts of his old master.
Such was the circle in the midst of which Comenius found himself, and much further our acquaintance with the details of his visit does not go. He was delighted with London. To his friends in Lissa he writes with enthusiasm of the preachers, the libraries, and the anxiety displayed for school reform.
“I live,” he says in a letter dated the 18th of October, “as a friend among friends; though not so many visit me as
