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 venae lacteae, 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 weight of air, the possibility or impossibility of vacuities and
nature's abhorrence thereof, the Torricellian experiment in quicksilver,
the descent of heavy bodies and the degree of acceleration therein,
with divers other things of like nature, some of which were then but new
discoveries, and others not so generally known and embraced as now they
are; with other things appertaining to what hath been called the New
Philosophy, which from the times of Galileo at Florence, and Sir Francis
Bacon (Lord Verulam) in England, hath been much cultivated in Italy,
France, Germany, and other parts abroad, as well as with us in England."

The learned Dr. Wallis, 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 t