yalist and
Prelatist, but withal the Hebrew Professor, and the most famous
Orientalist in England, Dr. Edward Pocock. From his little parish of
Childry, where he passes for "no Latiner," and is little prized, he has
come up to deliver his Arabic lecture, and collate some Syriac
manuscript, and observe the progress of the fig-tree which he fetched
from the Levant; and he feels not a little beholden to the
Vice-Chancellor, who, when the Parliamentary triers had pronounced him
incompetent, interfered and retained him in his living. Passing the gate
of Wadham he meets the upbreaking of a little conventicle. That no
treason has been transacting nor any dangerous doctrine propounded, the
guardian of the University has ample assurance in the presence of his
very good friends, Dr. Wallis the Savilian Professor, and Dr. Wilkins
the Protector's brother-in-law. The latter has published a dissertation
on the Moon and its Inhabitants, "with a discourse concerning the
possibility of a passage thither;" and the former, a mighty
mathematician, during the recent war had displayed a terrible ingenuity
in deciphering the intercepted letters of the Royalists. Their companion
is the famous physician Dr. Willis, in whose house, opposite the
Vice-Chancellor's own door, the Oxford Prelatists daily assemble to
enjoy the forbidden Prayer-Book; and the youth who follows, building
castles in the air, is Christopher Wren. This evening they had met to
witness some experiments which the tall, sickly gentleman in the velvet
cloak had promised to show them. The tall sickly gentleman is the
Honorable Robert Boyle, and the instrument with which he has been
amusing his brother sages, in their embryo Royal Society, is the newly
invented air-pump. Little versant in their pursuits, though respectful
to their genius, after mutual salutations, the divine passes on and pays
an evening visit to his illustrious neighbor, Dr. Thomas Goodwin. In his
embroidered night-cap, and deep in the recesses of his dusky study, he
finds the recluse old President of Magdalene; and they sit and talk
together, and they pray together, till it strikes the hour of nine; and
from the great Tom Tower a summons begins to sound calling to Christ
Church cloisters the hundred and one students of the old foundation. And
returning to the Deanery, which Mary's cheerful management has
brightened into a pleasant home, albeit her own and her little
daughter's weeds are suggestive of recent sorro