STATE OP ENGLAND IN 1685.

401

Poets sang -with emulous fervour the approach of the goldenage. Cowley, in lines weighty with thought and resplendent •with wit, urged the chosen seed to take possession of thepromised land flowing with milk and honey, that land whichtheir great deliverer and law-giver had seen, as from the sum-mit of Pisgali, but had not been permitted to enter. * Dryden,with more zeal than knowledge, joined his voice to the generalacclamation, and foretold things which neither he nor any-body else understood. The Royal Society, he predicted,would soon lead us to the extreme verge of the globe, andthere delight us with a better view of the moon.** Two ableand aspiring prelates, Ward, Bishop of Salisbury, and Wilkins,Bishop of Chester, were conspicuous among the leaders of themovement. Its history was eloquently written by a youngerdivine, who was rising to high distinction in his profession,Thomas Sprat, afterwards Bishop of Rochester. Both ChiefJustice Hale and Lord Keeper Guildford stole some hoursfrom the business of their courts to write on hydrostatics.Indeed it was under the immediate directions of Guildfordthat the first barometers ever exposed to sale in London wereconstructed.*** Chemistry divided, for a time, with wine andlove, with the stage and the gaming table, with the intriguesof a courtier and the intrigues of a demagogue, the attentionof the fickle Buckingham. Rupert has the credit of havinginvented mezzotinto; and from him is named that curiousbubble of glass which has long amused children and puzzledphilosophers. Charles himself had a laboratory at Whitehall,and was far more active and attentive there than at the councilboard. It was almost necessary to the character of a fine

* Cowley’s Ode lo the Royal Society.

** “Then we upon the globe’s last verge shall go,

And view the ocean leaning on the sky;

From thence our rolling neighbours we shall know,

And on the lunar world securely pry.”

Annus Mirabilis, 104.

*•* North’s Life of Guildford.

Macaulay, History. /. 26

C1UP.

ill.