that elevation of sentiment which Plutarch so well knew how to paint. Reverses of fortune, which would have overwhelmed another, were encountered by him with stoic firmness. Involved at an advanced age in the failure of a banker,* he lost by that event the savings of his whole life; but he contented himself with saying affectionately to Madame Beautemps-Beaupré, "This event, my love, makes us younger by thirty years," an expression which supposed in her an elevation of sentiment equal to his own. Few marriages, indeed, have been so happy as that which he contracted, in 1804, with Madame Fayolle, widow of a commissary general of marine. Both were nearly eighty when death separated them by the removal of the wife; it was the first cloud which had darkened their union.

M. Fayolle, issue of the first marriage of Madame Beautemps-Beaupré, found in our colleague a second father, and, as hydrographical engineer, was for many years one of his most distinguished and useful assistants.

M. Beautemps-Beaupré had always had a weakness of the breast; at the age of eighteen some physicians had even augured an early decline. When he embarked to take part in the expedition of d'Entrecasteaux, it was generally thought that he would never again sce France. This prognostic was fortunately falsificd; but an obstinate cough attended his whole life, and in later years subjected him to much annoyance.

It will scarcely be forgotten among ourselves that, at our sessions, he was a model of punctuality. He signed our record the 23d of October, 1853, but thenceforward was forced to renounce his attendance. This privation, and the sufferings which occasioned it, he bore with a resignation full of cheerfulness. One of our colleagues having called to see him, and expressing the hope that a strong constitution would again restore him to us, he replied with a smile, "I am duly sensible of your kindness, but I shall soon be eighty-eight.” Firm in a Christian faith, M. Beautemps-Beaupré accepted death without a murmur. "Let us not repine," said Admiral Baudin at his grave, "that, in subjecting him for several months to the supreme trial of excessive suffering, God afforded him the opportunity of setting an example of resignation and unalterable serenity."

He expired March 16, 1854, surrounded by a devoted family, which numbers two inheritors of his distinguished name-M. Pierre Beautemps-Beaupré, president of the Chamber of Commerce of Grandville, and M. Charles BeautempsBeaupré, imperial procurator at Mantes. In this Academy he succeeded M. de Fleurieu, his master and friend, and has himself been succeeded by M. Daussy, who, from 1811, had been his most constant collaborator, and who efficiently contributed to secure to the hydrographic survey of the coasts of France geodetic bases of irreproachable precision.

* The banker, who was his relative, might have been prosecuted for fraudulent bankruptcy. M. Beautemps-Beaupré threw in the fire the only paper which could have procured his condemnation, saying, "It is not I who will ever be instrumental in disgracing a relative."

OUTLINE OF THE ORIGIN AND HISTORY

OF THE

ROYAL SOCIETY OF LONDON.

PREPARED FOR THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION BY C. A. ALEXANDER.

"The principal advantage of academies consists in the philosophical spirit naturally engendered by them, which spreads itself throughout society, and extends to all objects. The isolated inquirer may resign himself without fear to the spirit of system; he only hears afar off the contradiction which he incurs. But in a learned society the conflict of systematic opinions soon results in their overthrow; and the desire of being mutually satisfied necessarily establishes between the members an agreement to admit nothing but the results of observation and calculation. Hence, as experience has shown, true philosophy has been generally dif fused since the rise of academies. By setting the example of subjecting everything to the examination of a rigorous analysis, they have dissipated the prejudices which had too long tyrannized in the sciences, and in which the best intellects of preceding ages had shared. Their useful influence over opinion has, in our day, dispelled errors which had been received with an enthusiasm that in other times would have perpetuated them. Equally exempt from the credulity which would admit everything, and the prejudice which disposes to the rejection of whatever departs from received ideas, these enlightened bodies have always, in difficult questions, and with reference to extraordinary phenomena, wisely awaited the answers of observation and experiment, which they have at the same time solicited by prizes and by their own labors. Proportioning their appreciation, as well to the magnitude and difficulty of a discovery as to its immediate utility, and convinced by many examples that the most sterile in appearance may some day lead to important consequences, they have encouraged the research for truth in regard to all objects, with the exclusion of those only which the limits of man's understanding render forever inaccessible. Finally, it is from their bosom that those great theories have arisen whose generality places them beyond the common reach, and which, spreading themselves by numerous applications over nature and the arts, have become inexhaustible sources of light and fruition. Wise governments, convinced of the utility of such societies, and considering them as one of the principal foundations of the glory and prosperity of empires, have not only instituted them, but attached them to their own service, that they might derive from them that knowledge which has often proved of the highest public advantage."-(Laplace, Precis de l'Histoire de l'Astronomie, p. 99.)

"The development and advancement of science," it has been remarked, “are signally indebted to three among modern associations: the Accademia del Cimento at Florence, which endured, however, but for a short time; the Royal Society of London; and the Academy of Sciences at Paris." The first of these was established in 1657, under the patronage of the Grand Duke Ferdinand II, acting upon the advice of Viviani, the great geometrician. The name adopted by this society implies as its object the investigation of truth by experiment alone, and its members, whose number was unlimited and included the distinguished names of Castellio and Torricelli, were held to no other obligation but an abjuration of all authority and a resolution to inquire after truth, without regard to the doctrines of any previous system of philosophy. Nor did the Academy pass away without leaving a record of its labors. A volume, containing reports of the experiments made under its auspices, was printed in 1666, including, with many others, those on the supposed incompressibility of water, the universal gravity of bodies, and the property of electric substances.

For England, after Italy, is claimed a priority in the formal inauguration of a similar and purely scientific association, and the date of the establishment of

the Royal Society, which is referred to 1660, certainly preceded by six years that of its French rival. But, independently of the consideration that the period had arrived when the state of experimental science urgently demanded the realization of those splendid visions of associated activity which had long before kindled the imagination of Bacon, * the chronological origin of the illus trious bodies in question is involved in some obscurity in consequence of their previous existence as private and spontaneous reunions of certain learned men of the age. Hence the title of the "Invisible College," which we find applied by Boyle to the future Royal Society, while as yet it existed only in this inchoate state, a period of which the following passages convey to us some interesting notices:

"About the year 1645," says Dr. Wallis, "while I lived in London, (at a time when, by our civil wars, academical studies were much interrupted in both our universities,) besides the conversation of divers eminent divines as to matters theological, I had the opportunity of being acquainted with divers worthy persons inquisitive into natural philosophy and other parts of human learning, and particularly of what hath been called the New Philosophy, or Experimental Philosophy. We did, by agreement, divers of us, meet weekly in London on a certain day, to treat and discourse of such matters. Our business was (precluding matters of theology and state affairs) to discourse and consider of philosophical inquiries, and such as related thereunto, as physic, anatomy, geometry, astronomy, navigation, statics, magnetics, chymics, mechanics, and natural experiments, with the state of these studies as then cultivated at home and abroad. We then discoursed of the circulation of the blood, the valves in the veins, the vena lactea, the lymphatic vessels, the Copernican hypothesis, the nature of comets and new stars, the satellites of Jupiter, the oval shape (as was then supposed) 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 racuities and nature's abhorrence thereof, the Torricellian experiment in quicksilver, the descent of heavy bodies and the degrees of acceleration therein, and 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."

"For such a candid and impassionate company as that was," says Dr. Sprat, in his History of the Royal Society," and for such a gloomy season, what could have been a better subject to pitch upon than natural philosophy? To have been always tossing about some theological question would have been to make that their private diversion, the excess of which they themselves disliked in the public; to have been eternally musing on civil business and the distresses of their country was too melancholy a reflection. It was nature alone which could pleasantly entertain them in that estate. Their meetings were as frequent as their affairs permitted; their proceedings, rather by action than discourse, chiefly attending some particular trials in chemistry or mechanics. They had no rules nor method fixed; their intention was more to communicate to each other their discoveries, which they could make in so narrow a compass, than an united, constant, or regular inquisition. Thus they continued, without any great intermissions, till about the fatal year 1658, when the continuance of their meetings might have made them run the hazard of the fate of Archimedes; for then the place of their meeting (Gresham College) was made a quarter for soldiers."

"There arose at this time," says Dr. Whewell, alluding to the period antecedent to the epoch of Newton, "a group of philosophers who began to knock

* See the "New Atlantis," of Lord Bacon.

at the door where truth was to be found, although it was left for Newton to force it open. These were the founders of the Royal Society." "The men who formed the Royal Society," says Bishop Burnet, "were Sir Robert Moray, Lord Brouncker, a profound mathematician, and Dr. Ward, a man of great research, and so dexterous that his sincerity was much questioned. But he who labored most, at the greatest charge, and with the most success at experiments, was the Hon. Robert Boyle, a devout Christian, humble and modest almost to a fault." Among other names connected with the Society in its earlier stage, or at the period of its formal organization, and still memorable in science, literature, or the arts, may be distinguished those of Bishop Wilkins, Sir Kenelm Digby, Evelyn, Denham, Clarke, Cowley, Willis, Wren, Ashmole, &c.

"The first journal book of the Society, a plain unpretending volume, bound in basil, yet destined to receive great names and to be the record of important scientific experiments," opens with the date of November 28, 1660, and with the proceedings of a meeting which may be regarded as organic in relation to the form and permanence of the Society. Here it was determined that meetings should be regularly held every Wednesday during term time; that a contribution of ten shillings on admission, and of one shilling weekly, should be levied on each member, whether present or absent, as long as he should please to maintain his connexion with the association, and a list was formed of the names of such persons, known to those present, as were judged willing and fit to unite with them in their design. At a subsequent meeting a committee of three or more (as occasion might permit) was empowered to frame a constitution, which was submitted and adopted at a general meeting on the 12th of December following. By this, the standing officers of the Society were declared to be three: a president or director, a treasurer, and a register; the first to be chosen monthly, the two latter annually. An amanuensis and operator are styled "servants belonging to the Society," and receive salaries, the former 40, the latter 4 pounds per annum. The stated number of members was fixed at fifty-five, with permission that all persons of the degrees of baron or above might, at their choice, be admitted as supernumeraries. It was provided that no candidate should be elected the same day he was proposed, and that at least twenty-one members should be present at each election. For such election, the amanuensis, it is ordered, shall provide "several little scrolls of paper of equal length and breadth, in number double to the Society present. One-half of them shall be marked with a cross, and being rolled up shall be laid in a heap on the table; the other half shall be marked with ciphers, and being rolled up shall be laid in another heap. Every person coming in his order shall take from each heap a roll, and throw which he please privately into an urn, and the other into a box. Then the director, and two others of the Society, openly numbering the crossed rolls in the urn, shall accordingly pronounce the election." Two-thirds of those voting were necessary to a choice. The Society having included, as we have seen, two poets, Denham and Cowley, among its members, was fairly entitled to a greeting from the muse. This it received through the ingenious pen of Cowley, in verses whose philosophical truth as well as originality of illustration may perhaps still justify quotation. After deploring the fate of philosophy, which for three or four thousand years had been kept by unwise or dishonest tutors in a state of nonage, he tells us :

Bacon, at last, a mighty man! arose,
Whom a wise king and Nature chose
Lord chancellor of both their laws,

And boldly undertook the injur'd pupil's cause.

From the long errors of the way,

In which our wandering predecessors went,

And, like the old Hebrews, many years did stray

In deserts, but of small extent,

Bacon! like Moses, led us forth at last

The barren wilderness he pass'd

Did on the very border stand

Of the bless'd promis'd land,

And from the mountain's top of his exalted wit,

Saw it himself, and show'd us it.

If the poet has somewhat overstated the claims of Lord Bacon as the herald of experimental philosophy, he seems to have been gifted with a clearer vision of the future achievements of the Society, which he thus apostrophises :

From you, great champions! we expect to get
Those spacious countries but discover'd yet;
Countries where yet, instead of Nature, we
Her image and her idols worship'd see.

*

New scenes of heaven already we espy,
And crowds of golden worlds on high,

Which from the spacious plains of earth and sea
Could never yet discover'd be

By sailor's or Chaldean's watchful eye.

Nature's great works no distance can obscure,

No smallness her near objects can secure:

Ye'ave taught the curious sight to press

Into the privatest recess

Of her imperceptible littleness;

Ye'ave learn'd to read her smallest hand,

And well begun her deepest sense to understand.

Cowley possessed other claims than merely literary ones to scientific fellowship; he had taken a degree in medicine and written, elegantly at least, on plants and trees. He had besides, as Dr. Sprat assures us, accelerated the foundation of the Royal Society by the publication of a proposition for the advancement of experimental philosophy, which is still found among his works, and though the form of his proposed "college" was not adopted, it cannot be denied that he has compreliensively, if quaintly, stated the objects to which such an institution would necessarily be destined: "To weigh, examine, and prove all things of nature, and detect, explode, and strike a censure through all false moneys, with which the world has been paid and cheated so long, and (as I may say) set the mark of the college upon all true coins, that they may pass hereafter without any further trial. Secondly, it will recover the lost inventions, and, as it were, drowned lands of the ancients. Thirdly, it will improve all arts which we now have, and, lastly, discover others which we yet have not."

It cannot but afford a curious insight into the state of natural knowledge at this early stage of the labors of the Society, if we glance at the manner in which it proceeded to deal with the currency of which Cowley speaks, in order to explode what was spurious and accredit what was genuine. With this view a few entries from the journal are here given:

"Dr Clarke was entreated to lay before the Society Mr. Pellin's relation of the production of young vipers from the powder of the liver and lungs of vipers.

Sir Gilbert Talbot promised to bring in what he knew of sympatheticall cures. Those that had any powder of sympathy were desired to bring some of it at the next meeting. "The Duke of Buckingham promised to cause charcoal to be distill'd by his chymist, and to bring into the Society a piece of unicorne's horn.

"Sir Kenelm Digby related that the calcined powder of toads reverberated, applyed in bagges upon the stomach of a pestiferate body, cures it by several applications. [Digby delighted in the marvellous, and is said to have fed his wife on capons fattened with the flesh of vipers, in order to preserve her beauty.]

"A circle was made with powder of unicorne's horne and a spider set in the middle of it, but it immediately ran out severall times repeated. The spider once made some stay upon the powder.

"A letter was introduced treating of a petrified city and its inhabitants." &c., &c.