crackling wit of the Rochesters and Sedleys, 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, 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 organization:--

"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 venæ lacteæ, 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 of the moon, the several phases of Venus and Mercury, the
improvement of telescopes and grinding of glasses for that purpose, the