of a disappointed man. It is
probable, he adds, that the points told with some effect on the Society;
for shortly after its publication the _Transactions_ possess a much higher
scientific value.

I copy an account which I gave elsewhere.

When the Royal Society was founded, the Fellows set {22} to work to prove
all things, that they might hold fast that which was good. They bent
themselves to the question whether sprats were young herrings. They made a
circle of the powder of a unicorn's horn, and set a spider in the middle of
it; "but it immediately ran out." They tried several times, and the spider
"once made some stay in the powder." They inquired into Kenelm Digby's
sympathetic powder. "Magnetic cures being discoursed of, Sir Gilbert Talbot
promised to communicate what he knew of sympathetical cures; and those
members who had any of the powder of sympathy, were desired to bring some
of it at the next meeting."

June 21, 1661, certain gentlemen were appointed "curators of the proposal
of tormenting a man with the sympathetic powder"; I cannot find any record
of the result. And so they went on until the time of Sir John Hill's
satire, in 1751. This once well-known work is, in my judgment, the greatest
compliment the Royal Society ever received. It brought forward a number of
what are now feeble and childish researches in the Philosophical
Transactions. It showed that the inquirers had actually been inquiring; and
that they did not pronounce decision about "natural _knowledge_" by help of
"_natural_ knowledge." But for this, Hill would neither have known what to
assail, nor how. Matters are now entirely changed. The scientific bodies
are far too well established to risk themselves. _Ibit qui zonam perdidit:_

"Let him take castles who has ne'er a groat."

These great institutions are now without any collective purpose, except
that of promoting individual energy; they print for their contributors, and
guard themselves by a general declaration that they will not be answerable
for the things they print. Of course they will not put forward anything for
everybody; but a writer of a certain reputation, or matter of a certain
look of plausibility and safety, {23} will find admission. This is as it
should be; the pasturer of flocks and herds and the hunters of wild beasts
are two very different bodies, with very different policies. The scientific
academies are what a spiritualist might call "publishing mediums," and
_t