nomena of physical causation are reproduced at the will of the experimenter:

"Rise at Volition's call, in groups combined,

Amuse, delight, instruct, and serve mankind." *

1. Scientific and light-bringing experiments are of two sorts,Experimenta lucifera. "Their very essence is to shed light upon something which was dark before; to furnish a key to some hidden mystery of nature." 2. Artistic, practical, or fruit bringing,Experimenta fructifera, "intended to subserve some merely useful object; and to yield a profit to the experimenter, not [purposely] to enlarge the knowledge of mankind ; which "bring with them immediate gain and a present harvest." Of course as science is intellectual insight, only light-bringing experimentation fulfils the primordial purpose of science. "The art of [scientific] observation is a late development. Science depends greatly on this art for its progress, and yet the art is only to be evolved during the slow advances of science, the two go hand in hand; they act and react." Science suggests observations or experiments, and the results of these light up the path of progress, or show the places where failures have occurred; thus it at once encourages the spirit by illuminating the region of discovered truth, and economizes effort by indicating where, at least, it has been sought without being found. "The introduction of experiment distinguishes the modern method of investigating Nature from that of ancient times and of the middle ages." "Aristotle was the logician of Reasoning; Acquinas of Conception; and Bacon of Experiment. The Novum Organum is the work of an epoch-making thinker, and the works of Robert Boyle are the earliest offspring of that luciferous and fructiferous experimentalism, which has done so much for the advancement of learning and the restoration of the sciences. Boerhaave speaks of "Mr. Boyle" as "the ornament of his age and country," who "succeeded to the genius and inquiries of the great Chancellor Verulam ;" and "it has even been remarked," says Hallam, " that he was born in the year of Bacon's death, as the person destined by nature to succeed him."

The reformation shook the fabric of scholasticism to its foundation. An era in the world's history had arisen when Change had become essential to civilization. Enfranchisement of soul gave effort impulse, so that discovery and invention became the issues of the tendencies and aims of the spirit of activity which stirred within mankind. Bacon comprehended the age of reform and sought to make philosophy conformable to it by the projecting of a logic corresponding to the wants of the times-a logic whereby a man might deliberately achieve by intention and invention what had previously been for the most part the result of lucky hits and stray occurrences. He sought to change chance into design, and to *Sir G. C. Lewis, " On Observation and Reasoning in Politics," i. p. 159.

induce the mind of man so to think that it would invent experiments, and thereby conquer for itself the mastery of nature;-for "science and human power coincide." Science is to be pursued not merely for the satisfaction of the restless ingenuity and the speculative vivacity of scholastics as a solace for a student's lonely hours, as a quickener of the dull edge of rich men satiated with all that is old, and yearning for sensations that are new, but for the purpose of making the life of man wiser, nobler, happier, and fitting him to be a worthy denizen of this wondrous world in which science reveals itself.

Coming after Bacon, feeling all the beauty of the system of experimental science suggested by him who, much more correctly than Hobbes, could be called "the great Columbus of the golden lands of new philosophies," Robert Boyle practised what Bacon taught, and was a sedulous investigator of nature by experiment. In the strength of his genuine common sense he appreciated the discoveries of Galileo and his compeers as well as the writings of Bacon, and while he took guidance from the latter he received his practical impulses from the former; Bacon gave laws to Boyle. Boyle illustrated these laws, and Newton-who was born in the year of Galileo's death, when Boyle was fifteen,-captivated by the brilliancy of the illustrations made by him, found in them his earliest inducement to enter upon those splendid experiments by which he has glorified science. As the earliest thoroughgoing experimentalist, the first who designedly accepted, adopted, and promoted the Inductive Logic, as a man whose thoughts have since given birth to sciences, and laid the foundations of discoveries, and as an influential and reverential inquirer after "truth for its own sake," a notice of the life of the Honourable Robert Boyle seems to be an especially appropriate theme for this time, when science is held in such honour and claims so much of the admiration and homage of mankind.

In a magnificent castle, originally built by King John in 1185, and subsequently possessed by Sir Walter Raleigh, Richard Boyle -in early life one of the under clerks of the Chief Baron of the Exchequer, but then "the great Earl of Cork "-had been holding high Christmas holidays. His second wife, Mrs. Catherine Fenton, daughter of Sir Geoffrey Fenton, principal Secretary of State in Ireland, had loyally assisted at the festivities of her lord whose spouse she had been for nearly twenty-three years, in the course of which she had brought to him six sons and seven daughters. The guests had all departed and family repose had been restored within the recently enlarged and strengthened pile which overlooks the Blackwater and the Owenshad from a height of one hundred feet, at the west end of what is now the town of Lismore, in the province of Munster, Ireland. Here on the 25th January, 1626, the earl's seventh son and penultimate child-Robert Boyle-was born. His earliest childhood was passed under the care of a nurse away from home. He lost his mother at an early age, and was taken

charge of when a boy a good deal by his sisters. He learned, when young, to speak French and Latin. He was studious and truthful, and these qualities endeared him much to his father, who, however, was engaged in such various and engrossing pursuits that he was little able to expend parental assiduity on his expanding mind. At the early age of eight he was sent, in company with an elder brother, to Eton-whose provost, Sir Henry Wotton-statesman, diplomatist, scholar and poet-was his father's friend. He was placed under the immediate care of one of the masters-Mr. Harrisonto whom he became much attached, and who had discernment enough to see the tendency of the boy's mind and the skill to direct its capacities to right efforts, alternately exciting and gratifying his curiosity, combining regulated exercise with profitable study, and especially using conversation as a means of communicating knowledge, and of culturing taste and expression. His love of study under this tutorage became intense, and his passion for reading grew so absorbing that he required to strengthen the relaxed tone of his mind by a thorough course of mathematics, in whose precise relations, close reasonings, and resistless conclusions he found the bracing culture of attention of which he stood in need, and owed his rescue from becoming a castle-building dreamer, dawdling and dallying with the delights of novels and poetry, to the seductive fascinations of which he had well-nigh yielded up his intellect-in a sort of delicious voluptuousness of desire which coloured life with the hues of imagination.

At Eton he acquired the elements of classical learning, and attained considerable acquaintance with the best writers of antiquity-his taste in these matters having been first excited by "the accidental perusal of Quintus Curtius," whose attractive history of Alexander the Great, though somewhat rhetorical and sensational, is well calculated to affect the glowing fancy of a boy, by giving the enchantment of vitality to the dead past.

On his father's leaving Ireland to reside for a short time at Stalbridge, in Dorsetshire, Robert Boyle was taken from Eton and placed under the private tuition of the rector of that Cale-watered parish, who seems to have excited in his mind a considerable amount of religious reflectiveness. In his thirteenth year he and his elder brother Francis were entrusted to the care of a Genevese named Mr. Marcombes, to be taken through the usual course of Continental travel, which at that time formed a portion of a high class education, as it cultured the observative faculty, necessitated or aided the acquisition of spoken languages, supplied a fund of interesting visible experience, and was, in fact, the study of history, geography, and life from reality rather than from books. They travelled leisurely through France, passing by way of Paris and Lyons towards Geneva, and on the way he acquired a tolerable fluency in the use of the language of Arnauld, Richelieu, and Descartes-a skill which was greatly increased by an after-course of romance-reading indulged in as a recreative exercise in the intervals of a three years'

range of studies in logic, rhetoric, mathematics, political geography, &c., which, together with fencing and dancing, occupied the main portion of their time in Geneva. Here he also continued his Greek studies, and commenced to learn Hebrew-that he might be able to read the originals of the scriptures and to "pay God the respect usual from civil inferiors to princes with whom they are wont to converse in their own languages."

In September, 1641, Mr. Marcombes and his wards set off to Italy, and after visiting Venice he determined on wintering in Florence, where Francis and Robert Boyle employed themselves in the study of the Italian language, and the latter engaged in investigating "the new paradoxes of the great star-gazer, Galileo, whose ingenious books, because they could not be so otherwise, were confuted by a decree from Rome." At Arcetri, near Florence, on 8th January, 1642, Galileo died, and doubtlessly the renown of his discoveries, as well as the obsequies performed in Santa Croce in honour of him, must have awakened in a young quick mind like his a wholesome sympathy, not only with and for

"The starry Galileo and his woes,"

but also an earnest interest in the problems which he had suffered for attempting to solve the problems on which Viviani and Torricelli were engaged, and in which their master and themselves were the precursors of the young Englishman who was afterwards to link the logic of Bacon with the experimentalism of Galileo, and pass on the torch of observative science, caught up at the grave of Galileo, to that puny, sickly, posthumous child which a week before had struggled into being at Woolsthorpe, near Grantham (we rectify the style in our calculation), but was afterwards to become one of the master thinkers of the universe-Sir Isaac Newton,

"Sagacious reader of the works of God,
And in His word sagacious."

From Florence, Boyle proceeded to Rome, where he passed for a Frenchman, and managed to evade the law which prohibited the residence of Protestants within its precincts. He wintered again in the " Etrurian Athens "-" in the great town on the fair river of Arno" where Dante was born and from which he was exiled; and "where Machiavelli's earth returned from whence it rose." In the spring the two English lads took their homeward route by Pisa -with its wonderful "leaning tower;" Leghorn-with its strange summer-life and commercial activity; Genoa-with its memories of the crusades, the Moors, and Columbus; and Marseilles suggesting Greek civilization, Roman might, and modern commerce. Here the brothers anticipated remittances, but instead of that they got only a notice of scantiness of funds, in consequence of the difficulty of collecting money in Ireland during the rebellion in 1641, and even this, through the dishonesty of the merchant to whom it was intrusted for remittance, did not reach them. In these circumstances they made the best of their way to Geneva, where Mr.

Marcombes provided them with board and lodging for nearly two years, during which time they neither received news nor money from home. Despairing of other means Mr. Marcombes bought, on credit, a quantity of jewellery, which they took with them, and by disposing of portions of it in the several places they came to on their route, they managed to reach England, where they learned that their father had died September 15th, 1614, in the 78th year of his age. By his father's will Mr. Robert Boyle became the possessor of the estate and manor of Stalbridge in Dorsetshire, and several considerable properties in Ireland; but owing to the disturbed state of that island he was unable for a time to visit his newly-acquired possessions in it. As a lad of eighteen, he took up his residence for a season with his sister, Lady Ranelagh. By this excellent lady his convictions on religion were in a great measure settled, and his morals were sedulously watched over, and his whole nature was subdued to piety, virtue and knowledge.

After some time spent in settling his affairs, securing Parlia mentary protection for his Irish estates, and gaining permission from Cromwell-through his third brother, Lord Broghill, who had become romantically attached to the Protector-to visit France for the payment of debts contracted there by his brother Francis Lord Shannon and himself in their straits abroad, Mr. Robert Boyle resolved to retire to his Dorsetshire residence, and there to devote some years to serious study and close investigation. His chief intellectual industry was given to ethics-"being desirous to call them from the brain into the heart and from the school to the house;" compositions in prose and verse; mechanics and natural science, paying especial attention to chemistry. "Geography, history, and travels, were his amusements." He was master of the mathematics of his time, he was conversant with the ancient letters, and had perused the Rabbinists and the Fathers; but his favourite pursuit was the investigation by experiment of all matters capable of being observed with care and art, with the design of comprehending the principles of Nature and the method in which she worked in the composition of things and in the production of results. This continued to be his sole aim in all that splendid series of scientific researches and discoveries which have secured

immortality for his name as the father of experimental chemistry,"

as well as 'the brother of the Earl of Cork."

"The excellent Mr. Boyle," says Mr. Hughes in The Spectator, No. 554,"was the person who seems to have been designed by nature to succeed to the labours and inquiries of that extraordinary genius, Lord Bacon. By innumerable experiments he, in a great measure, filled up those plans and outlines of science, which his predecessor had sketched out. His life was spent in the pursuit of Nature, through a great variety of forms and changes, and in the most rational as well as devout adoration of its Divine Author." Few men, if any "-in the opinion of Bishop Burnet—“ have been known to have made so great a compass, and to have been so exact