energy of thought, quickened along its whole line, which prompted free inquiry into nature. It gave new impulse and a definite direction to the movement that produced it. Scientific studies had new charms for many minds, and there was an enthusiasm for experiment in the Baconian way. Many a quiet thinker, to whom civil war was terrible, turned aside from the tumult of the times, and found rest for his mind in the calm study of nature. Such men were drawn together by community of taste, driven together also by the discords round about them; and the influence of Bacon's books upon the growing energy of scientific thought was aided by the civil war.

But years before the civil war, the spirit of inquiry began to be active for advance of science. John Napier, of Merchistoun, used the same mind which had spent its energies, in 1593, upon "A Plaine Discovery of the whole Revelation of St. John," upon the discovery of the use of Logarithms, and set forth his invention, in 1614, as "Mirifici Logarithmorum Canonis Descriptio." In the following year, 1615, William Harvey probably first brought forward, in lectures at the College of Physicians, his discovery of the circulation of the blood, afterwards more fully established and set forth in a small book, early in the reign of Charles I. Harvey at first lost practice by his new opinions, and his doctrine was not received by any physician who was more than forty years old; but he was made, in 1623, Physician Extraordinary to James I., and in 1632 Physician to Charles I.

21. John Wilkins was born in 1614, the son of a goldsmith, at Oxford, was educated there, graduated, took orders, and was chaplain, first to Lord Say, then to the Count Palatine of the Rhine. When the civil war broke out, he took the Solemn League and Covenant. In 1638 he published anonymously, "The Discovery of a New World; or, a Discourse tending to prove that 'tis probable there may be another Habitable World in the Moon." In 1640 this was followed by a "Discourse concerning a New Planet; tending to prove that 'tis probable our Earth is one of the Planets." Wilkins's book on the world in the moon closed with an argument for the proposition "that 'tis possible for some of our posterity to find out a conveyance to this other world; and if there be inhabitants there, to have commerce with them." His other tract, in support of the doctrine set forth by Copernicus, in 1543, and developed in the time of Charles I. by Galileo, included a temperate endeavor to meet those prevalent theological objections to which Galileo had been forced to bend. In 1641, he called attention to various methods of cipher-writing, as well as of telegraphing, by his “Mercury; or, the Secret and Swift Messenger: Shewing how a Man may with Privacy and Speed Communicate his Thoughts to a Friend at a Dis

tance."

In 1668, he was made Bishop of Chester; and in the same year his most interesting work, "An Essay towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language," was printed by the Royal Society. This applied natural philosophy to language, and labored towards the deduction from first principles of quickened intercourse among men, by an easy common language in which significant signs were to build up the meaning of each word. Bishop Wilkins died in 1672, at his friend Tillotson's house in Chancery Lane.

22. Samuel Hartlib was of a good Polish family; ancestors of his had been Privy Councillors to Emperors of Germany. He came to England about 1628, and his active beneficent mind brought him into friendship with many of the earnest thinkers of the time. In 1641, Hartlib published "A Brief Relation of that which hath been lately attempted to procure Ecclesiastical Peace among Protestants," and a "Description of Macaria," his ideal of a well-ordered state. In the midst of the strife of civil war, Hartlib was wholly occupied with scientific study, having especial regard to the extension and improvement of education, and the development of agriculture and manufactures. In 1642 he translated from the Latin of a Moravian pastor, John Amos Comenius, two treatises on "A Reformation of Schooles." His zeal for the better education of the people, as a remedy for their distresses, caused him not only to give thought to the education of the poor, but also to attempt the establishment of a school for the improved education of the rich; and he asked Milton to print his ideas on the subject; hence the tract of eight pages published by Milton, in 1644, without titlepage, but inscribed on the top in one line, "Of Education. To Mr. Samuel Hartlib." In 1651 Hartlib edited a treatise on "Flemish Agriculture,” which gave counsel that added greatly to the wealth of England. Among Hartlib's schemes was a plan for a sort of guild of science, which should unite students of nature into a brotherhood while they sought knowledge in the way set forth by Francis Bacon.

23. A young man of science who did not separate himself from the contest of the time was the mathematician, John Wallis, born in 1616, son of a rich incumbent of Ashford, Kent. His father died when he was six years old, his mother educated him for a learned profession, he went at sixteen to Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and is said to have been the first student who maintained Harvey's new doctrine of the circulation of the blood. There was no study of mathematics then in Cambridge; the best mathematicians were in London, and their science was little esteemed. Wallis graduated, obtained a fellowship at Queen's College, took orders in 1640, and acted as chaplain in private families until the Civil War. He then took the side of the Parliament, and used his mathematical skill in reading the secret ciphers of the Royalists. In 1643, he obtained the living of St. Gabriel, Fenchurch Street. In the same year the death of his mother gave him independent fortune. In 1644 he married, and was one of the secretaries of

the Assembly of Divines at Westminster. In 1645 he was among the men of science, and took part in the meetings which led to the formation of the Royal Society. In 1648 he was rector of a church in Ironmonger Lane. He remonstrated against the execution of Charles I., and in 1649 he was appointed Savilian Professor of Geometry at Oxford. He died in 1703.

CHAPTER VII.

FIRST HALF OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY: RELIGIOUS, PHILOSOPHICAL, AND POLITICAL WRITERS.

1. Owen Feltham. — 2. Henry More.—3. Richard Sibbes.—4. Jeremy Taylor. — 5. William Prynne.-6. Peter Heylin.-7. William Chillingworth.-8. Philip Hunton; Sir Robert Filmer.-9. John Gauden.-10. John Milton.

1. THE religious mind of England had in the days of James I. and of Charles I., as always, manifold expression. There were many readers of the "Resolves, Divine, Moral, and Political," published about 1628, by Owen Feltham, a man of middle-class ability, with a religious mind, who was maintained in the household of the Earl of Thomond. His Resolves are one hundred and forty-six essays on moral and religious themes, the writing of a quiet churchman, who paid little attention to the rising controversies of his day.

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2. Henry More represented Platonism. He was born in 1614, at Grantham, in Lincolnshire, educated at Eton and Christ Church, Cambridge, where he obtained a fellowship. He abandoned Calvinism, was influenced by Tauler's Theologia Germanica," and fed his spiritual aspirations with writings of Plato and the Neoplatonists, Plotinus and Iamblichus, and Platonists of Italy at the time of the revival of scholarship. Henry More was for a time tutor in noble families, obtained a prebend at Gloucester, but soon resigned it in favor of a friend. Content with a small competence, he declined preferment, and sought to live up to his own ideal as a Christian Platonist. lived on through the reign of Charles II., and died in 1687, aged seventy-three. The Platonism which had been a living influence upon Europe at the close of the fifteenth century had its last representative in Henry More. In 1642 he published "vydue Platonica; or, a Platonical Song of the Soul," in four books;

He

with prefaces and interpretations, published in 1647, as " Philosophicall Poems." The first book, "Psychozoia" (the Life of the Soul), contained a "Christiano-Platonicall display of life." The Immortality of the Soul was the theme of the second part, "Psychathanasia," annexed to which was a metrical "Essay upon the Infinity of Worlds out of Platonick Principles." The third book contained "A Confutation of the Sleep of the Soul, after Death," and was called "Antipsychopannychia," with an Appendix on "The Pre-existency of the Soul." Then came "Antimonopsychia," or the fourth part of the "Song of the Soul," containing a confutation of the Unity of Souls; whereunto is annexed a paraphrase upon Apollo's answer concerning Plotinus's soul departed this life. This poem was throughout written in the Spenserian stanza, with imitation also of Spenser's English. The books were divided into cantos, and each canto headed in Spenser's manner. Thus, the first canto of Book I. is headed:

"Struck with the sense of God's good will,

The immortality

Of souls I sing; praise with my quill

Plato's philosophy."

But there is no better reason why it should not have been all written in prose, than the evidence it gives that Platonism came as poetry to Henry More, although he was not himself a great poet. He also published, with a dedication to Cudworth, the Hebrew Professor at Cambridge, his "Conjectura Cabbalistica," a triple interpretation of the three first chapters of Genesis, with a "Defence" of it. The Jewish Cabala was conceived to be a traditional doctrine or exposition of the Pentateuch, which Moses received from the mouth of God while he was on the mount with him. Henry More's book expounded "a threefold Cabala," which was, he said, "the dictate of the free reason of my mind, heedfully considering the written text of Moses, and carefully canvassing the expositions of such interpreters as are ordinarily to be had upon him." The threefold division of his Cabala" was into literal, philosophic, and moral. wrote also against atheisin, and on theological topics.

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More

3. Intense religious feeling, Puritan in tone, was expressed in the ser