LITTELL'S LIVING AGE.-No. 264.-9 JUNE, 1849.

From the British Quarterly Review. 1. A History of the Royal Society, with Memoirs of the Presidents. By CHARLES RICHARD WELD, Esq., Barrister-at-law; Assistant Secretary and Librarian to the Royal Society. In 2 vols. London: John W. Parker, West Strand, 1848. 2. Occasional Reflections. By the Hon. ROBERT BOYLE. J. H. Parker, Oxford and London,

1848.

3. Boyle Lectures for 1846. By FREDERICK DEN-
ISON MAURICE, M. A., Chaplain of Lincoln's
Inn; and Professor of Divinity in King's Col-
lege, London. London: John W. Parker,
West Strand. Second Edition, 1848.
4. A Sermon, preached January 7, 1691-2, at the
Funeral of the Hon. Robert Boyle. By GIL-
BERT BURNETT, D. D. Edited by JOHN JEBB,
D. D., F. R. S., Bishop of Limerick, Ard-
fert and Aghadoe. London: James Duncan,
37 Paternoster Row, 1833.

It is reported of Thomas Carlyle that he once half-jestingly declared his intention of writing a life of Charles II., as one who was no sham or half man, but the perfect specimen of a bad king. Charles, however, if he did no other good thing, founded the Royal Society, and by so doing saved his portrait from being cut out in untinted black, by the stern humorist's scissors.

through a morning to attend, on occasion, "An anatomical administration," at Gresham College, and see an executed criminal dissected. From time to time, also, the members of the Royal Society showed him their more curious experiments, and Charles first smiled approbation, and then generally found something to laugh at, either in the experiment or the experimenter. It occasioned him no little diversion, as we learn from Pepys, to witness the philosophers "weighing of ayre.' He had too strong and practised a sense of the ludicrous not to be keenly alive to the little pedantries and formalities of some of the fellows; and too little reverence in his nature to deny himself a laugh at their weaknesses and follies. He was sometimes, no doubt, entitled to his smile at the experimenter; and always, if he saw fit, at the experiment. For everything on this earth has its ludicrous, as well as its serious, aspect, and the grave man need not grudge the merry man his smile at what he thinks strange.

An experiment, too, was a thing on the result of which a bet could be laid as well, as on the issue of a game at cards or a cock-fight. The Royal Society was, on one occasion, instructed that "his majesty has wagered 50l. to 51. for the compression of air by water." (Weld, vol. i., p. 231.) A trial, accordingly, was made by one of its most distinguished members, and the king, as may be surmised, won his wager. (p. 232.)

The thoughtless monarch, no doubt, did as little for science as he well could. The only incident in his life which can be referred to as indicating a personal interest in it, is his sending the society a recipe for the cure of hydrophobia, but the act was It is impossible to read the histories and euloprobably prompted as much by his love of dogs as gies of the Royal Society, without detecting in his love of science. Sheer carelessness on his part them, in spite of all their laudations of its kingly appears to have been the cause of the society's not founder, a subdued, but irrepressible conviction, obtaining confiscated lands in Ireland, which he was that by no address of the annalist can Charles II. willing it should possess, and which would have be made to figure as an august patron and proultimately yielded an ample revenue. The mem- moter of science. It is not that he will not brook bers besought him for apartments where they might comparison with such princes as Leo X., or the meet and keep their library, curiosities, and appara- Florentine dukes. Charles could not be expected tus. Charles at last gave them a dilapidated col- to equal them, but he took such pains to show lege and grounds at Chelsea; but characteristically that he had the progress of science as little at enough, it turned out that the property was only in heart as the maintenance of personal virtue, or part his to give; and the society finding it had in-public morality, that he has baffled the most adroit herited little else than a multitude of law suits, was glad to restore the college to government, and accept a small sum in exchange. Yet Charles did more for science, at a time too when royal patronage was a precious thing, than many wiser and better monarchs have done, and it would be difficult to discover any sinister or interested motive which the king had in assisting the philosopher. He probably did not pretend (except in the society's charters, which in all likelihood he never read) to revere science as truth, or covet it as power, but he could wonder at it as marvellous. It dealt in novelties, and he was too intelligent and inquisitive, not to be struck by them. It helped him

CCLXIV.

LIVING AGE. VOL. XXI. 28

royalist to say much in his praise. He was often expected at the public meetings of the society, but he never accomplished an official visit. He dreaded, no doubt, the formality and tediousness of the séance, and his presence might have recalled the caustic proverb, "Is Saul, too, among the prophets?"

Nevertheless, it might have fallen to the Royal Society's lot to have had a worse founder. Its seeds were sown and had even germinated in the days of James I., but the philosophers were fortunate in escaping the patronage of the most learned of the Stuarts. James would have plagued them as much as Frederick the Great

1. Female Immorality-its Causes and Remedies, English Review,

2. The Vanity and Glory of Literature,

Edinburgh Review,
Examiner,

United Service Magazine,

Frazer's Magazine,
Chambers' Journal,

385

392

409

411

416

430

431

7. Recent Events in Italy,

POETRY.-Catch; The Grave; The Sycamine, 410.-The Phantom Ship, 415.-The Shadow of the Past; The Emigrants' Ship; The Emigrant's Tomb, 429. SHORT ARTICLE.-John Home, 430.

PROSPECTUS. This work is conducted in the spirit of | Littell's Museum of Foreign Literature, (which was favorably received by the public for twenty years,) but as it is twice as large, and appears so often, we not only give spirit and freshness to it by many things which were excluded by a month's delay, but while thus extending our scope and gathering a greater and more attractive variety, are able so to increase the solid and substantial part of our literary, historical, and political harvest, as fully to satisfy the wants of the American reader.

The elaborate and stately Essays of the Edinburgh, Quarterly, and other Reviews; and Blackwood's noble criticisms on Poetry, his keen political Commentaries, highly wrought Tales, and vivid descriptions of rural and mountain Scenery; and the contributions to Literature, History, and Common Life, by the sagacious Spectator, the sparkling Examiner, the judicious Athenæum, the busy and industrious Literary Gazette, the sensible and comprehensive Britannia, the sober and respectable Christian Observer; these are intermixed with the Military and Naval reminiscences of the United Service, and with the best articles of the Dublin University, New Monthly, Fraser's, Tait's, Ainsworth's, Hood's, and Sporting Magazines, and of Chambers' admirable Journal. We do not consider it beneath our dignity to borrow wit and wisdom from Punch; and, when we think it good enough, make ase of the thunder of The Times. We shall increase our variety by importations from the continent of Europe, and from the new growth of the British colonies.

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While we aspire to make the Living Age desirable to all who wish to keep themselves informed of the rapid progress of the movement-to Statesmen, Divines, Law. yers, and Physicians-to men of business and men of leisure-it is still a stronger object to make it attractive and useful to their Wives and Children. We believe that we can thus do some good in our day and generation; and hope to make the work indispensable in every well-informed family. We say indispensable, because in this day of cheap literature it is not possible to guard against the influx of what is bad in taste and vicious in morals, in any other way than by furnishing a sufficient supply of a healthy character. The mental and moral appetite must be gratified.

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Or all the Periodical Journals devoted to literature and science which abound in Europe and in this country, this has appeared to me to be the most useful. It contains indeed the exposition only of the current literature of the English language, but this by its immense extent and comprehension includes a portraiture of the human mind in the utmost expansion of the present age. J. Q. ADAMS.

LITTELL'S LIVING AGE.-No. 264.-9 JUNE, 1849.

did the savans he favored. His sacred majesty | sented their patron with a succession of remarkwould have dictated to the wisest of them what able discoveries and inventions, which told directly

on the commercial prosperity of his kingdom. The art, above all others the most important to this country, navigation, owes its present perfection in great part to the experiments on the weight of the air, and on the rise and fall of the barometer, to the improvements in time-keepers, and the astronomical discoveries and observations which Boyle, Hooke, Newton, and other members of the Royal Society made during Charles the Second's reign. The one hundred and fifty ounces of silver gilt were returned to the treasury in his lifetime.

Charles I., we can well believe, looked on with unassumed interest at Harvey's dissection of the deer's heart, and demonstration of his great discovery of the circulation of the blood. What- In exchange for the regal title which they reever that monarch's faults may have been, he had ceived, the society made the monarch's reign too religious a spirit not to have honored science, memorable by the great discoveries which signaland too kingly a manner to have insulted its stu-ized that era, and under his nominal leadership dents. But his patronage would have compro- won for him the only honorable conquests which mized the liberties and lives of the philosophers can be connected with his name. Estimated in during the civil war, and we should grudge now coin, or in honor, given and received, the king if the perversest cavalier among them had paid stands more indebted to the society than the sociewith his life for his scientific royalism. ty to him.

The uncrowned king that followed the first Charles, had his hands too full of work, and his head and heart too much occupied with very different things, to have much patience with weighers of air, or makers of "solid glass bubbles." (Rupert's drops, Weld, i., 103, 113.) But a hint that they could have helped him to a recipe for "keeping his powder dry," or improved the build of his ships, or the practice of navigation, would at once have secured the favor of the sagacious protector. When the restoration came, however, such services to Cromwell would have procured for the philosophers a swift and bloody reward.

We will not, however, strive to lessen Charles'

merit. The gift of the mace, "bauble" though it was, may be accounted a sincere expression of good will. It probably appeared to the donor, an act of self-denial to let so much bullion of the realm go past the profligates of both sexes, who emptied his pockets so much faster than he could fill them; and the deed may pass for a liberal one. We willingly make the most of it. Charles the Second's reign is, from first to last, such a soiled and blotted page, that we are thankful for one small spot, which, like the happy ancients, we can mark with white. CAROLUS SECUNDUS REX, we think of with contempt, and loathing or indignation; but Charles Stuart, F.R.S., meant on the whole well, and did some little good in his

If any

by

Things fell out, as it was, for the best. The infant society escaped the dangerous favors of king and protector, till the notice of royalty could | day. only serve it and then it received just as much Charles' connection with the Royal Society, of courtly favor as preserved it from becoming the however, is a small matter in its history. He prey of knavish hatchers of sham plots, and other was its latest name-giver, not its founder. disturbers of its peace; and so little of substan- single person can claim that honor, it is Lord Batial assistance that its self-reliance and indepen- con, who, by the specific suggestions in his "New dence were not forfeited in the smallest. Charles Atlantis," but also, and we believe still more, the Second did the Royal Society the immense the whole tenor of his "Novum Organum," and service of leaving it to itself, and an institution other works on science, showed his countrymen numbering among its members such men as New-how much can be done for its futherance, by the ton, Boyle, and Hooke, (to mention no others,) coöperation of many laborers. But even Bacon needed only security from interruption, and could must share the honor with others; learned sociedispense with other favors. And it had to dis- ties are not kingdoms which the monarchs of inpense with them. The title of the society is apt tellect found; but republics, which grow out of to convey the impression that it had the govern- the common sympathies of many minds. Fraterment to lean upon, and was dowered from its nity is the rule, though not equality, and there is treasury. But this was not the case. no prating about liberty, for it is enjoyed by all. ciety was not fondled into greatness by royal nursing. Charles' only bonû fide gift to it, was what Bishop Horsley, in an angry mood, denounced as "that toy," the famous bauble mace, (Weld, ii., 168,) which the original warrant for its making, calls "one guilt mace of one hundred and fifty oz." (Weld, i., 163.)

The so

A Bacon or a Descartes does not act on his fellows like a great magnet, attracting to itself all the congenial metal within its range. A brotherhood grows as a crystal does. Particle seeks out like particle, and the atoms aggregate into a symmetrical whole. The crystal, when completed, has not the same properties in every part, but it In return for this benefaction the society pre- is not the presence of a peculiarly-endowed mole

cule at the centre, or the summit, that occasions | preceded those great ones. It is certain that men the difference.

ical science, which characterized the seventeenth century, than this-that mankind, as a whole, is possessed of a progressive intellectual life, which, like organic life, is marked at intervals by sudden crises of permanent expansion. The seed shoots forth the germ. The petals blow into the flower; the chrysalis bursts into the butterfly. The boy starts into the youth; his thoughts are elevated, his desires changed; and so the whole race, in a brief interval of time, is lifted to a higher intellectual level, and its speculations directed into new channels.

with endowments, liberal enough to have disIt seems a vain thing, accordingly, to insist on covered much, if not all, that has been left for us singling out individuals, however gifted, as the and our immediate forefathers to find ui, adorned founders of learned "bodies." The very title even the darkest epoch of the earlier ages. Among we apply to them might show us the folly of it. the astrologers and alchemists, were men of such "The body is not one member, but many." It rare genius, that, if by some choice anesthetic, was not the brain that produced it, nor the heart, they could have been flung into a trance, and kept although it may be true that these were first and pleasantly dreaming of " the joy of Jupiter," and fullest developed, and were essential to the knit- the elixir of life, till the present time, they would ting together of the weaker and less vital mem- awake to dispute the palm with our Herschels bers. and Faradays. We will attempt no other explaThe association of gifted men, which after-nation of the sudden, universal, and catholic rewards became the Royal Society, rose into being cognition of the interest and importance of physsimultaneously with many similar institutions, in other parts of Europe. These were not copies of each other, but originated in the kindred sympathies of their several founders. Why such societies should have sprung up in the seventeenth century, and not earlier, or later, is a question not to be answered by reference to any single cause. It will not solve the problem, to say that Bacon was born at a certain epoch, or Galileo, or Newton. The birth of those and other great men, is as much part of the phenomenon to be explained, as the explanation of it. Neither will the invention of printing, nor the outburst of the Reformation, supply more than a part of the rationale. What we have to account for is this: -Mankind stood for ages, with closed eyelids, before the magnificence of un-ideal nature, or opened them only to gaze at her with the eyes of poets, painters, and mystics. They saw won drous visions, and clothed nature with splendid vestments, which they wove for her. All at flower. once they bethought themselves, that the robes which God had flung over the nakedness of the material world, might be worth looking at, and might prove a more glorious apparel than the ideal garments which man's imagination had fash-flowering of the genius of the nations of Europe. ioned for the universe. It was no accident, or mere result of a certain century having arrived. The printing press, and the Reformation, the births of great men, and much else, were its thorns and leaves, and the wide-spread supporting roots; but we cannot say, therefore, the revolution in men's scientific tastes occurred after 1600, rather than after 1500 or 1700, any more than we can demonstrate that 1848 was the necessary and infallible year for the overturning of the thrones of Europe.

The sleep of centuries was broken in a day. The first glances at the outer world were so delightful, that the eye was not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear with hearing. Men longed to extend their grasp beyond the reach of the unassisted senses. Within a few years of each other, the telescope, the microscope, the thermometer, the barometer, the air-pump, the diving-bell, and other instruments of research, were invented and brought to no inconsiderable perfection. The air, the earth, the sea, the sky, were gauged and measured, weighed, tested, and analyzed. The world had been satisfied for hundreds of years with the one half of the Hebrew monarch's proverb, "It is the glory of God to conceal a thing." The verse was now read to the end, "but the honor of kings is to search out a matter."

The aloe buds, thorns, and leaves only for ninety-nine years, and we have to wait till the hundredth comes, before the flower blooms. The flower is not an accident of the hundredth year, but its complement and crown. Had the thorns not protected the leaves, and the leaves elaborated the juices during the ninety-nine barren years, the century would not have been crowned by the Yet why the aloe blooms in its hundredth, rather than in its fiftieth or its tenth year, is not explained by this acknowledgment.

The contest between Charles the First and the English people, was contemporaneous with an aloe

The Royal Society was one of the choicest buds of this blossoming of the European intellect. Its beginnings were some two hundred years ago, about 1645, when "divers ingenious persons" met weekly in London, to make experiments and discuss the truths they taught. "We barred," says Dr. Wallis, one of their members, "all discourses of divinity, of state affairs, and of news, other than The searching out of the willingly divulged what concerned our business of philosophy." secrets of nature, was not delayed till the seven- About the year 1648-9, some of their company teenth century, because none but Bacons, New-removed to Oxford, upon which, the society, like tons, Galileos, Descartes, and Pascals were com- a polypus, divided itself into two. The one half, petent to the task. We need not ask whether provided with a new tail, remained in London, the men of as ample, or exactly the same gifts, had other, furnished with a new head, throve at Ox