From Florence he went on to Rome, and was enabled to exercise his observing and inquiring spirit without interruption, by taking upon him the character of a Frenchman. He had, while in Geneva, acquired the most perfect ease and correctness in that language, and, in Rome, the acquisition became important. It was his aim to escape the penetrating espionage of the English jesuits, whose duty it would have been to denounce the prohibited presence of an English protestant. Mr Boyle attributed this prohibition to the reluctance which was felt by the Papal court and the ecclesiastical authorities to allow strangers, and particularly protestant strangers, to perceive the very low state of religion then prevalent, and the little reverence paid to the Pope in his own city. There was, indeed, enough to fix his attention upon the darkness and intellectual prostration of the place and time. He never, he declares, saw so small a respect for the Pope as in Rome, or met with infidelity so open and unshrinking as in Italy.

From Rome he returned to Florence, and from thence to Pisa, Leghorn, and by sea to Genoa. He then returned to France. On his journey he was exposed to no small danger in the streets of a frontier town, for refusing to take off his hat to a crucifix. At Marseilles he met with gloomy tidings, accompanied by a severe and unexpected disappointment. Having expected remittances, he only received letters from his father, giving deplorable accounts of the rebellion, and informing him that he had only had it in his power to raise £250, to bear their expenses home. This remittance miscarried, it is believed from the dishonesty of the banker in Paris to whom it was committed. Under these embarrassing circumstances, Mr Marcombes brought them back to Geneva, where they were compelled to remain for two years, in the vain expectation of supplies, and at last found it necessary to have recourse to an expedient, to enable them to find their way home. Mr Marcombes obtained a sufficient amount of jewellery on his own credit, and this enabled them to travel on to England, where they arrived in 1644.

In the mean time the earl of Cork had died. He left, by will, the manor of Stalbridge, and some other property in Ireland, to Robert Boyle. But though thus well provided for in the way of fortune, the unsettled condition of the country rendered it difficult for him to obtain money, so that he found it expedient to reside for several months with his sister, lady Ranelagh. This arrangement was fortunate, as it was the means of diverting him from a purpose which he had recently formed of entering the army.

As his brother, lord Broghill, had considerable interest, he obtained through his means a protection for his estates in England and Ireland, and was also permitted to return to France for the purpose of settling the debts which he had been forced to contract.

He soon returned and retired to his manor of Stalbridge, where he spent four years in the most intense pursuit of knowledge, occasionally, however, relaxing his mind, or diversifying his studies, by excursions to London and Ŏxford. During this interval he applied himself for a time to ethical investigations, upon which subject he composed a treatise. His favourite pursuit, however, was natural philosophy, in different departments of which he soon obtained as much knowledge

as the state of science at that period afforded. He mentions of himself, that, at this period of his life, his industry was so unremitting, that he continued to mix study with every pursuit, so as not to lose a moment which could be profitably applied. "If they were walking down a hill, or on a rough road, he would still be studying till supper, and frequently proposed such difficulties as he had met with to his governor."

Among the resources of learned men in that period for the attainment and interchange of knowledge, none was more cultivated or more effective for its end than epistolary correspondence; by means of which, the concert and stimulus which soon after began to be propagated by learned societies, was kept up by individual communications. For those, who like Boyle devoted themselves to knowledge, such a resource was then of primary consideration, and, to a great extent, also supplied the place of books: the lights of science were uncertain and rare, and the ardent student of nature was on the watch for every gleam. Boyle was not remiss in seeking the enlightening intercourse of those who were the most eminent for worth and learning.

In 1645, during the civil wars, a small company of persons of talent and learning were in the habit of meeting in London first, and afterwards, when London became too troubled for peaceful studies, in Oxford. The object of their meetings was to hold conversations and make communications in natural philosophy. This was the first begining of that most illustrious institution the Royal Society, and consisted of many of those who were its most eminent members-Wallis, Wren, Ward, Wilkins, &c.,-men, among whom, at Mr Boyle's time of life, it was, in the highest degree, an honour to be included. They were the followers of Bacon, and the immediate precursors of Newton. The light of human reason had been long struggling, vainly, to break forth from the overpowering control of the spiritual despotism of the middle ages; and in Italy, a succession of minds of the first order, Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, with his contemporaries, had arisen, in vain, above the dim twilight of school and cloister-though not permitted to be the lights of science, yet condemned to leave indelible illustrations of the power of superstition and slavery, and of the importance of freedom of thought to the advancement of mankind. This vital element had found its place in England: the reformation of religion was also the rectification of reason, and the spirit of the venerable fathers of modern science was now to shine out in the daylight of freedom, unfettered by any impositions save those limits assigned by him from whom reason is the gift to man. The eminent men whom we have mentioned had agreed upon weekly meetings at each other's lodgings; they also sometimes met in Gresham College. Their meetings were interrupted after the death of Charles, when London, for a time, became the seat of crime and anarchy, and especially unsafe for those who did not wish to go the fullest lengths of compliance with the spirit of the hour. The principal portion of the members retired to Oxford. The result of the connexions thus formed was a more determinate direction to the philosophical taste, and, perhaps, an increased impulse to the extraordinary assiduity with which Mr Boyle devoted

himself to investigations which have conferred upon his name a distinguished place in the history of natural philosophy.

The close and sedentary habits, consequent on such assiduous study, were not without their debilitating effects upon Boyle's corporeal frame. Before he was yet of age he became subject to repeated attacks of that most afflicting disease, the stone.

In 1652, he came over to settle his affairs in Ireland, and remained for a considerable time, but complained very much of the great obstacles which baffled his efforts to make a progress in his favourite investigations in chemical science. Still his unrelaxing ardour found a congenial pursuit in anatomy, and he entered on a course of dissection, under the guidance of Dr William Petty, physician to the army. Of this, he says, "I satisfied myself of the circulation of the blood, and have seen more of the variety and contrivances of Nature, and the majesty and wisdom of her Author, than all the books I ever read in my life could give me convincing notions of."

In 1654, he executed an intention, which he had long meditated, of retiring to Oxford, where his chief associates in study still met; and where he could with more ease pursue his favourite inquiries in science. It was their custom to meet at each other's apartments or dwellings, in turn, to discuss the questions of principal interest at the time, mutually communicating to each other the result of their several labours. They called themselves the Philosophical College, and perhaps were not without some sense of the important results to which their studies were afterwards to lead. They principally applied themselves to mathematical, and, still more, to experimental inquiries in natural philosophy. Among this distinguished body, the nucleus of modern philosophy, Boyle was not the least active or efficient. Of his labours, we shall presently speak more in detail. He seems to have been early impressed by the discoveries and the opinions declared by the Florentine philosophers, and directed his investigations with a view to confirm and follow out their discoveries: the result was a very considerable improvement upon the air-pump, a machine invented very recently by Otto of Guericke, a burgomaster of Magdeburg. Endowed with faculties, in the very highest degree adapted to the purposes of experimental science, he pursued, confirmed, and extended the science of pneumatics, of which the foundations had been laid by Torricelli, Pascal, and Huygens.

During the same interval, while engaged with ardour essential to genius and natural to youth, in these captivating and absorbing pursuits, Boyle's just, comprehensive, and conscientious spirit was not turned aside from the still higher path which he had chosen for his walk through life. The same inquiring, docile, and cautious habits of mind, improved by the investigations of natural philosophy, were directed to the investigation of the sacred records. He made great progress in the acquisition of the Oriental tongues, and in the critical study of the Scriptures in their original languages. He composed an "Essay on the Scriptures," in which this proficiency is honourably illustrated. The exemplary zeal with which, amidst the multiplicity of his pursuits, and the distraction of severe disease, he gave his mind

to a pursuit, so apt to be overlooked by men intensely engaged in temporal pursuits, is very strongly expressed by himself. "For my part, reflecting often on David's generosity, who would not offer as a sacrifice to the Lord that which cost him nothing, I esteem no labour lavished that illustrates or endears to me that divine book, and think it no treacherous sign that God loves a man, when he inclines his heart to love the scriptures, where the truths are so precious and important that the purchase must at least deserve the price. And I confess myself to be none of those lazy persons who seem to expect to obtain from God a knowledge of the wonders of his book, upon as easy terms as Adam did a wife, by sleeping soundly." Of this spiritual frame of mind we shall find numerous and increasing proofs. During his residence at Oxford he was not less solicitous in his cultivation of, and intercourse with, the best preachers and ablest divines, than with those eminent philosophers who had associated themselves with him, and whose meetings were often held in his apartments. Pococke, Hyde, Clarke, and Barlow, were among his intimates and advisers in those studies, of which they were the lights and ornaments in their day. In common with the ablest and soundest of his literary associates, he warmly opposed the absurd scholastic method of philosophizing, which was the remains of the scholastic period, but was maintained under the abused name and sanction of Aristotle.

The reputation of his learning and sanctity was perhaps extended by his character as a philosopher, as well as by his illustrious birth. The lord chancellor Clarendon was among those who importuned him to enter upon holy orders; but Boyle, with the just and philosophical discernment, as well as the disinterestedness of his character, refused, upon the consideration that his writings in support of divine truth would come with more unmixed authority from one connected by no personal interest with its maintenance. So high at the same time was his reputation as a philosopher, that the grand duke of Tuscany requested of Mr Southwell, the English resident at his court, to convey to Mr Boyle his desire to be numbered among his correspondents.

In 1662, a grant of the forfeited impropriations in Ireland was obtained in his name, but without any previous communication with him. This he applied to the purposes of maintaining and extending the benefits of Christianity, by supporting active and efficient clergymen. In the same year he was appointed president of the Society for the propagation of the gospel in New England: a society which was, we believe, the origin of those societies for the same end, of which the results have been so diffusively connected with the more permanent and higher interests of the human race.

The philosophical works and investigations of Boyle, in the meanwhile, followed thick upon each other. The splendid progress of the physical sciences since his time have been, in every branch, such as to cast an undeserved oblivion over the able and intelligent inquirers who began the march of science in England. Though they were far in advance of their day, yet after all, their happiest advances were but ignorant conjectures, compared with the discoveries which may be said to have followed in their track. The fame of Hooke is lost in

the discoveries of Newton.* Boyle is said to have suggested to this great man the first ideas of his theory of light, in an Essay containing "Considerations and Experiments concerning Colours." This was published in 1663, when Newton was in his twentieth year, and three years before he commenced those experiments to which the theory of colours is due. But Boyle's researches, directed by a true theory of the principles of inquiry, were full of true and just suggestions, of which, nevertheless, it is not a fair way of thinking, to attribute to them the discoveries of any subsequent inquirer. The same suggestions are, to a marvellous extent, presented to various minds with a coincidence which may be called simultaneous: they are, in truth, the product of the age, and of the reality of things. One true notion received will be similarly applied by nearly all minds of a certain order; and as principles of investigation and facts become matured and accumulated, it is rather the wonder how so many can differ than that so many should agree.

Mr Boyle was, at this period of life, exposed to the ridicule of persons of profligate or worldly temper, by the publication of some moral essay, under the title of "Occasional Reflections on different Subjects," which had been written in his younger days, and which, as might be expected from one of Mr Boyle's simplicity of mind, went to the fullest lengths in the truths of moral and spiritual reflection. That the soundest reason should on these, as on all other subjects of thought, keep nearest to truth, would seem to be a natural consequence. But the mind of society is, to a large extent, enlisted in behalf of the follies and corrupt conventions by which the spirit of the world is kept in conceit with itself; and one of the consequences is the tacit proscription of numerous plain truths, which no one denies, and few like to have forced upon their attention. The formal admission and practical contempt of many truths have thus converted them into solemn trifles, destitute of their proper meaning and afforded to satire the keenest of its shafts, which is directed against everything at which the world desires to laugh, and would gladly look upon as folly. It has, in effect, no very profound air to say gravely what every one knows and no one heeds, and it will become nearly burlesque, if such things are solemnly put forth in the tone and manner of deep reflection-the more so, too, as it is always very common to meet amiable shallow triflers, who deal in commonplaces, because, in fact, they can talk on no other conditions. But it is easy to see how, to a deep

*Newton probably took the thought of gravitation from Hooke. It is an interesting fact that Milton seems to have described the idea of solar attraction in the following lines :

"What if the sun

Be centre to the world, and other stars

By his attractive virtue and their own
Incited, dance about him various rounds ?"

Intense and serious minds seldom understand ridicule, and are, therefore, not unapt to walk unconsciously within its precincts. Ridicule is the great weapon of ignorance, shallowness, and vice; but it is wielded in the hands of wit and malice, and is, therefore, formidable.