e learned Dr. Wallis,[27] writing in 1696, narrates in these words,
what happened half a century before, or about 1645. The associates met
at Oxford, in the rooms of Dr. Wilkins, who was destined to become a
bishop; and subsequently coming together in London, they attracted
the notice of the king. And it is a strange evidence of the taste for
knowledge which the most obviously worthless of the Stuarts shared with
his father and grandfather, that Charles the Second was not content with
saying witty things about his philosophers, but did wise things with
regard to them. For he not only bestowed upon them such attention as he
could spare from his poodles and his mistresses, but, being in his usual
state of impecuniosity, begged for them of the Duke of Ormond; and, that
step being without effect, gave them Chelsea College, a charter, and
a mace: crowning his favours in the best way they could be crowned, by
burdening them no further with royal patronage or state interference.

Thus it was that the half-dozen young men, studious of the "New
Philosophy," [28] who met in one another's lodgings in Oxford or in
London, in the middle of the seventeenth century, grew in numerical and
in real strength, until, in its latter part, the "Royal Society for the
Improvement of Natural Knowledge" had already become famous, and had
acquired a claim upon the veneration of Englishmen, which it has ever
since retained, as the principal focus of scientific activity in our
islands, and the chief champion of the cause it was formed to support.

It was by the aid of the Royal Society [29] that Newton [30] published
his Principia. If all the books in the world, except the Philosophical
Transactions, [31] were destroyed, it is safe to say that the
foundations of physical science would remain unshaken, and that the vast
intellectual progress of the last two centuries would be largely, though
incompletely, recorded. Nor have any signs of halting or of decrepitude
manifested themselves in our own times. As in Dr. Wallis's days, so
in these, "our business is, precluding theology and state affairs,
to discourse and consider of philosophical enquiries." But our
"Mathematick" is one which Newton would have to go to school to
learn; our "Staticks, Mechanicks, Magneticks, Chymicks, and Natural
Experiments" constitute a mass of physical and chemical knowledge, a
glimpse at which would compensate Galileo [32] for the doings of a score
of inquisitorial cardinal