of the Rochesters and Sedleys,[22] and with the
revilings of the political fanatics, if my imaginary plain dealer
had gone on to say that, if the return of such misfortunes were ever
rendered impossible, it would not be in virtue of the victory of the
faith of Laud,[23] or of that of Milton; and, as little, by the triumph
of republicanism, as by that of monarchy. But that the one thing needful
for compassing this end was, that the people of England should second
the efforts of an insignificant corporation, the establishment of which,
a few years before the epoch of the great plague and the great fire, had
been as little noticed, as they were conspicuous.

Some twenty years before the outbreak of the plague a few calm and
thoughtful students banded themselves together for the purpose, as they
phrased it, of "improving natural knowledge." The ends they proposed
to attain cannot be stated more clearly than in the words of one of the
founders of the organisation:--

"Our business was (precluding matters of theology and state affairs) to
discourse and consider of philosophical enquiries, and such as related
thereunto:--as Physick, Anatomy, Geometry, Astronomy, Navigation,
Staticks, Magneticks, Chymicks, Mechanicks, and Natural Experiments;
with the state of these studies and their cultivation at home and
abroad. We then discoursed of the circulation of the blood, the valves
in the veins, the venae lacteae, the lymphatic vessels, the Copernican
hypothesis, the nature of comets and new stars, the satellites of
Jupiter, the oval shape (as it then appeared) of Saturn, the spots
on the sun and its turning on its own axis, the inequalities and
selenography [24] of the moon, the several phases of Venus and Mercury,
the improvement of telescopes and grinding of glasses for that purpose,
the weight of air, the possibility or impossibility of vacuities
and nature's abhorrence thereof, the Torricellian experiment [25] in
quicksilver, the descent of heavy bodies and the degree of acceleration
therein, with divers other things of like nature, some of which were
then but new discoveries, and others not so generally known and embraced
as now they 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 [26] (Lord Verulam) in England, hath been much cultivated
in Italy, France, Germany, and other parts abroad, as well as with us in
England."

Th