city Glanvill relates:--"At this period of the
conference, the disputer lost all patience, and with sufficient
spite and rage told me 'that I was an atheist!--that he had
indeed desired my acquaintance, but would have no more on't,'
and so turned his back and went away, giving me time only to
answer that 'I had no great reason to lament the loss of an
acquaintance that could be so easily forfeited.'" The
following chapter vindicates the Royal Society from the
charge of atheism! to assure the world they were not to be
ranked "among the black conspirators against Heaven!" We see
the same objections again occurring in the modern system of
geology.

[263] This book was so scarce in 1757, that the writer in the
"Biographia Britannica" observes that this "small but elegant
treatise is still very much esteemed by the curious, being
become so scarce as not to be met with in other hands." Oldys,
in 1738, had, in his "British Librarian," selected this work
among the scarce and valuable books of which he has presented
us with so many useful analyses.

The history of books is often curious. At one period a book is
scarce and valuable, and at another is neither one nor the
other. This does not always depend on the caprice of the
public, or what may be called literary fashions. Glanvill's
"Plus Ultra" is probably now of easy occurrence; like a
prophecy fully completed, the uncertain event being verified,
the prophet has ceased to be remembered.

[264] His early history is given by Wood in his usual style. His
father had been a Lincolnshire parson, who was obliged to
leave his poor curacy because "anabaptistically inclined," and
fled to Ireland, whence his mother and her children were
obliged to return on the breaking out of the rebellion of
1641, and landed at Liverpool; afterward, says Wood, "they all
beated it on the hoof thence to London, where she, gaining a
comfortable subsistence by her needle, sent her son Henry,
being then ten years of age, to the collegiate school at
Westminster. At that time Mr. Richard Busbie was the chief
master, who finding the boy have pregnant parts to a miracle,
did much favour and encourage him. At length Sir Henry Van