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design this Solomon did in order to the building of the material temple, and this is here to be pursued in the intellectual: nay, here was abundance of rubbish to be cleared, that the area might be free; and then was the foundation to be deeply searched, the materials accurately examined, squared, and adjusted before it could be laid: nor was this the labour of a few; less than a much longer time, more cost and encouragement than any which the Society has yet met withal, could not in season be sufficient effectually to go through so chargeable a work, and highly necessary.

A long time it was they had been surveying the decays of what was ready now to drop in pieces. Whatever show the outside made with a noise of elements and qualities, occult and evident, abhorrence of vacuum, sympathies, antipathies, substantial forms, and prime matter courting form; epicycles, Ptolemean hypothesis, magisterial definitions, peremptory maxims, speculative and positive doctrines, and alti-sonant phrases, with a thousand other precarious and unintelligible notions (all which they have been turning over to see if they could find anything sincere and useful among this pedantic rubbish, but in vain), here was nothing material, nothing of moment, mathematical or mechanical, and which had not been miserably sophisticated, on which to lay the stress; nothing in a manner whereby any further progress could be made, for the raising and ennobling the dignity of mankind in the sublimest operations of the rational faculty, by clearing the obscurities, and healing the defects of most of the physiological hypotheses, repugnant, as they hitherto seemed to be, to the principles of real knowledge and experience.

Now, although it was neither in their hopes or in their prospect to consummate a design requiring so mighty aids, environed as they have been with these prejudices, yet have they not desisted from the enterprise; but rather than so noble and illustrious an undertaking should not proceed for want of some generous and industrious spirits to promote the work, they have themselves submitted to those mean employments of digging in the very quarry ; yea, even of making bricks where there was no straw but what they gleaned, and lay dispersed up and down; nor did they think their pains yet ill bestowed, if, through the assiduous labour and train of continual experiments they might at last furnish and leave solid and uncorrupt materials to a succeeding and more grateful age, for the building up a body of real and substantial

philosophy, which should never succumb to time, but with the ruins of nature and the world itself.

In order to this how many, and almost innumerable, have been their trials and experiments through the large and ample field of art and nature! we call our journals, registers, correspondence, and transactions to witness; and may, with modesty, provoke all our systematical methodists, natural historians, and pretenders, hitherto extant from the beginning of letters to this period, to show us so ample, so worthy, and so useful a collection. It is a fatality and an injury to be deplored, that those who give us hard words will not first vouchsafe impartially to examine these particulars, since all ingenious spirits could not but be abundantly satisfied, that this illustrious assembly has not met so many years purely for speculation only; though I take even that to be no ignoble culture of the mind, or time misspent, for persons who have so few friends, and slender obligations to those who should patronise and encourage them: but they have aimed at greater things, and greater things produced. By emancipating and freeing themselves from the tyranny of opinion, delusory and fallacious shows, they receive nothing upon trust, but bring all things to the Lydian touch; make them pass the fire, the anvil, and the file, till they come forth perfectly repurged, and of consistence. They are not hasty in pronouncing from a single or incompetent number of experiments the ecstatic Evрnka, and offer hecatombs; but, after the most diligent scrutiny, and by degrees, and wary inductions honestly and faithfully made, record the truth and event of trials, and transmit them to posterity. They resort not immediately to general propositions upon every specious appearance, but stay for light and information from particulars, and make report de facto, and as sense informs them. They reject no sect of philosophers, no mechanic helps, except no persons of men, but cheerfully embracing all, cull out of all, and alone retain what abides the test; that, from a plentiful and well-furnished magazine of true experiments they may in time advance to solemn and established axioms, general rules and maxims; and a structure may indeed lift up its head, such as may stand the shock of time, and render a solid account of the phenomena and effects of nature, the aspectable works of God, and their combinations; so as, by causes and effects, certain and useful consequences may be deduced. Therefore they do not fill their papers with transcripts out of rhapsodies, mountebanks, and compilers of receipts and secrets.

to the loss of oil and labour; but, as it were, eviscerating nature, disclosing the resorts and springs of motion, have collected innumerable experiments, histories, and discourses, and brought in specimens for the improvement of astronomy, geography, navigation, optics, all the parts of agriculture, the garden, and the forest, anatomy of plants and animals, mines and ores, measures and equations of time by accurate pendulums and other motions, hydroand hygro-statics, divers engines, powers, and automata, with innumerable more luciferous particulars subservient to human life, of which Dr. Glanvil has given an ample and ingenious account in his learned essay, and since in the posthumous works of Dr. Hooke, lately published by the most obliging Mr. Waller, already mentioned.

This is, reader, what they have done, and they are but part of the materials which the Society have hitherto amassed and prepared for this great and illustrious work; not to pass over an infinity of solitary and loose experiments subsidiary to it, gathered at no small pains and cost: for so have they hitherto borne the burden and heat of the day alone, sapping and mining to lay the foundation deep, and raise a superstructure to be one day perfected by the joint endeavours of those who shall in a kinder age have little else to do but the putting and cementing of the parts together, which, to collect and fit have cost them so much solicitude and care. Solomon indeed built the glorious temple, but David provided the materials. Did men in those days insolently ask, What had he done in all the time of that tedious preparation? I beseech you what obligation has the Royal Society to render an account of their proceedings to any who are not of the body, especially when they carry on the work at their own expense amidst so many contradictions? It is an evil spirit and an evil age, which, having sadly debauched the minds of men, seeks with industry to blast and undermine all attempts and endeavours that signify, to the illustration of truth, the discovery of imposture and its sandy foundation.

(From the Address to the Reader in Silva.)

THE GROANS OF THE FOREST

IN the meanwhile, as the fall of a very aged oak, giving a crack like thunder, has often been heard at many miles' distance (con

strained though I often am to fell them with reluctancy), I do not at any time remember to have heard the groans of those nymphs (grieving to be dispossessed of their ancient habitations) without some emotion and pity. Now to show that many such disasters as that which befel Erisichthon have happened to the owners of places where goodly trees have been felled, I cannot forget one, who giving the first stroke of the axe with his own hand, and doubtless pursuing it with more, killed his own father by the fall of the tree, not without giving the incautious knight (for so he was) sufficient warning to avoid it. And here I must not pass by the groaning-board which they kept for a while in Southwark, drawing abundance of people to see the wonder; such another plant had been formerly, it seems, exposed as a miracle at Caumont near Toulouse, in France, and the like sometimes happens in woods and forests, through the inclusion of the air within the cavities of the timber, and something of this kind, perhaps, was heretofore the occasion of the fabulous Dodonean oracle. But, however this were, methinks I still hear, sure I am that I still feel, the dismal groans of our forests, when that late dreadful hurricane (happening on the 26th of November 1703) subverted so many thousands of goodly oaks, prostrating the trees, laying them in ghastly postures, like whole regiments fallen in battle by the sword of the conqueror, and crushing all that grew beneath them. Such was the prospect of many miles in several places, resembling that of Mount Taurus, so naturally described by the poet, speaking of the fall of the Minotaurs slain by Theseus :

Illa procul radicibus exturbata

Prona cadit, late quæcumvis obvia frangens.

The losses and dreadful stories of this ruin were indeed great, but how much greater the universal devastation through the kingdom! The public accounts reckon no less than 3000 brave oaks in one part only of the Forest of Dean blown down; in New - Forest in Hampshire, about 4000; and in about 450 parks and groves from 200 large trees to 1000, of excellent timber, without counting fruit and orchard trees sans number and proportionally the same through all the considerable woods of the nation.

Sir Edward Harley had 1300 blown down; myself above 2000: several of which, torn up by their fall, raised mounds of

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earth near twenty feet high, with great stones entangled among the roots and rubbish; and this almost within sight of my dwelling (now no longer Wotton), sufficient to mortify and change my too great affection and application to this work, which, as I contentedly submit to, so I thank God for what are yet left standing: Nepotibus umbram.

(From Silva.)

THE GREAT FIRE

I WENT this morning on foot from Whitehall as far as London Bridge, through the late Fleet Street, Ludgate Hill, by St. . Paul's, Cheapside, Exchange, Bishopsgate, Aldersgate, and out to Moorfields, thence through Cornhill, etc., with extraordinary difficulty, clambering over heaps of yet smoking rubbish, and frequently mistaking where I was. The ground under, my feet so hot that it even burnt the soles of my shoes. In the meantime His Majesty got to the Tower by water, to demolish the houses about the graff, which being built entirely about it, had they taken fire and attacked the White Tower, where the magazine of powder lay, would undoubtedly not only have beaten down and destroyed all the bridge, but sunk and torn the vessels in the river, and rendered the demolition beyond all expression for several miles about the country.

At return I was infinitely concerned to find that goodly Church St. Paul's now a sad ruin, and that beautiful portico (for structure comparable to any in Europe, as not long before repaired by the late king), now rent in pieces, flakes of vast stone split asunder, and nothing remaining entire but the inscription in the architrave, showing by whom it was built, which had not one letter of it defaced. It was astonishing to see what immense stones the heat had in a manner calcined, so that all the ornaments, columns, friezes, capitals, and projectures of massy Portland stone flew off, even to the very roof, where a sheet of lead covering a great space (no less than six acres by measure) was totally melted; the ruins of the vaulted roof falling broke into St. Faith's, which being filled with the magazines of books, belonging to the Stationers, and carried thither for safety, they were all consumed, burning for a week following.

It is also observable that the lead over the