dises, all natural magic, or divination; and briefly, all things contained in the catalogue of natural histories annexed to my Lord Bacon's Organon.

That once a day from Easter t'll Michaelmas, and twice a week from Michaelmas to Easter, in the hours in the afternoon most convenient for auditors from London according to the time of the year, there shall be a lecture read in the hall, upon such parts of natural experimental philosophy as the professors shall agree on among themselves, and as each of them shall be able to perform usefully and honorably.

That two of the professors by daily, weekly or monthly turns shall teach the public schools according to the rules hereafter prescribed.

That all the professors shall be equal in all respects (except precedency, choice of lodging, and such like privileges, which shall belong to seniority in the College,) and that all shall be masters and treasurers by annual turns, which two officers for the time being, shall take place of all the rest, and shall be Arbitri duarum Mensarum.

That the master shall command all the officers of the College, appoint assemblies or conferences upon occasion, and preside in them with a double voice, and in his absence the treasurer, whose business is to receive and disburse all moneys by the master's order in writing, (if it be an extraordinary,) after consent of the other professors.

That all the professors shall sup together in the parlor within the hall every night, and shall dine there twice a week (to wit Sundays and Thursdays,) at two round tables for the convenience of discourse, which shall be for the most · part of such matters as may improve their studies and professions, and to keep them from falling into loose or unprofitable talk, shall be the duty of the two Arbitri Mensarum, who may likewise command any of the servant-scholars to read them what they shall think fit, whilst they are at table; that it shall belong likewise to the said Arbitri Mensarum only, to invite strangers, which they shall rarely do, unless they be men of learning or great parts, and shall not invite above two at a time to one table, nothing being more vain and unfruitful than numerous meetings of acquaintance.

That the professors resident shall allow the College twenty pounds a year for their diet, whether they continue there all the time or not.

That they shall have once a week an assembly or conference concerning the affairs of the College, and the progress of their experimental philosophy.

That if any one find out any thing which he conceives to be of consequence, he shall communicate it to the assembly to be examined, experimented, approved, or rejected.

That if any one be author of an invention that may bring in profit, the third part of it shall belong to the inventor, and the two other to the Society; and besides, if the thing be very considerable, his statue or picture, with an eulogy under it, shall be placed in the gallery, and made a denizen of that corporation of famous men.

That all the professors shall be always assigned to some particular inquisition (besides the ordinary course of their studies,) of which they shall give an account to the assembly, so that by this means there may be every day some operation or other made in all the arts, as chemistry, anatomy, mechanics, and the like, and that the College shall furnish for the charge of the operation.

That there shall be kept a register under lock and key, and not to be seen

but by the professors, of all the experiments that succeed, signed by the persons who made the trial.

That the popular and received errors in experimental philosophy (with which, like weeds in a neglected garden, it is now almost all overgrown,) shall be evinced by trial, and taken notice of in the public lectures, that they may no longer abuse the credulous, and beget new ones by consequence or similitude.

That every third year (after the full settlement of the foundation,) the College shall give an account in print, in proper and ancient Latin, of the fruits of their triennial industry.

That every professor resident shall have his scholar to wait upon him in his chamber, and at table, whom he shall be obliged to breed up in natural philosophy, and render an account of his progress to the assembly, from whose election he received him, and therefore is responsible to it, both for the care of his education, and the just and civil usage of him.

That the scholar shall understand Latin very well, and be moderately initiated in the Greek, before he be capable of being chosen into the service, and that he shall not remain in it above seven years.

That his lodging shall be with the professor whom he serves.

That no professor shall be a married man, or a divine, or lawyer in practice, only physic he may be allowed to prescribe, because the study of that art is a great part of the duty of his place, and the duty of that is so great that it will not suffer him to lose much time in mercenary practice.

That the professors shall in the College wear the habit of ordinary masters of art in the universities, or of doctors, if any of them be so.

That they shall all keep an inviolable and exemplary friendship with one another, and that the assembly shall lay a considerable pecuniary mulet upon any one who shall be proved to have entered so far into a quarrel as to give uncivil language to his brother profe sor; and that the perseverence in any enmity shall be punished by the Governors with expulsion.

That the chaplain shall eat at the master's table, (paying his twenty pounds a year as the others do.) and that he shall read prayers once a day at least, a little before supper-time; that he shall preach in the chapel every Sunday morning, and catechise in the afternoon the scholars and the school-boy; that he shall every month administer the Holy Sacrament; that he shall not trouble himself and his auditors with the controversies of divinity, but only teach God in his just commandments, and in his wonderful works.

THE SCHOOL.

That the school may be built so as to contain about two hundred boys. That it be divided into four classes, not as others are ordinarily into six or seven, because we suppose that the children sent hither to be initiated in things as well as words, ought to have past the two or three first, and to have attained the age of about thirteen years, being already well advanced in the Latin grammar and some authors.

That none, though never so rich, shall pay any thing for their teaching; and that if any professor shall be convicted to have taken any money in consideration of his pains at the school, he shall be expelled with ignominy by the Governors; but if any persons of great estate and quality, finding their sons much better proficients in learning here than boys of the same age commonly

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are at other schools, shall not think fit to receive an obligation of so near concernment without returning some marks of acknowledgment, they may, if they please, (for nothing is to be demanded,) bestow some little rarity or curiosity upon the Society in recompense of their trouble.

And because it is deplorable to consider the loss which children make of their time at most schools, employing or rather casting away six or seven years in the learning of words only, and that too very imperfectly:

That a method be here established for the infusing knowledge and language at the same time into them; and that this may be their apprenticeship in natural philosophy. This we conceive may be done, by breeding them in authors or pieces of authors, who treat of some parts of nature, and who may be understood with as much ease and pleasure as those which are commonly taught; such are in Latin, Varro, Cato, Columella, Pliny, part of Celsus, and of Seneca, Cicero de Divinatione, de Natura Deorum, and several scattered pieces, Virgi's Georgics, Grotius, Nemesianus, Manilius; and because the truth is, we want good poets (I mean we have but few) who have purposely treated of solid and learned, that is, natural matters, (the most part indulging to the weakness of the world, and feeding it either with the follies of love, or with the fables of gods and heroes,) we conceive that one book ought to be compiled of all the scattered little parcels among the ancient poets that might serve for the advancement of natural sciences, and which would make no small or unusual or unpleasant volume. To this we would have added the Morals and Rhetorics of Cicero, and the Institutions of Quintilian; and for the comedians, from whom almost all that necessary part of common discourse and all the most intimate proprieties of the language are drawn, we conceive the boys made be made masters of them, as a part of their recreation and not of their task, if once a month, or at least once in two, they act one of Terence's comedies, and afterwards (the most advanced) some of Plautus'; and this is for many reasons one of the best exercises they can be enjoined, and most innocent pleasures they can be allowed. As for the Greek authors, they may study Nicander, Oppianus, (whom Scaliger does not doubt to prefer above Homer himself, and place next to his adored Virgil,) Aristolle's History of Animals, and other parts; Theophrastus and Dioscorides, of Plants, and a collection made out of several, both poets and other Grecian writers. For morals and rhetoric, Aristotle may suffice, or Hermogenes and Longinus be added for the latter. With the history of animals they should be showed anatomy as a divertisement, and made to know the figures and natures of those creatures which are not common among us, disabusing them at the same time of those errors which are universally admitted concerning many. The samo method should be used to make them acquainted with all plants; and to this must be added a little of the ancient and modern geography, the understanding of the globes, and the principles of geometry and astronomy. They should likewise use to declaim in Latin and English, as the Romans did in Greek and Latin; and in all this travel be rather led on by familiarity, encouragement and emulation, than driven by severity, punishment and terror. Upon festivals and playtimes they should exercise themselves in the fields by riding, leaping, fencing, mustering and training after the manner of soldiers, &c. And to prevent all dangers and all disorder, there should always be two of the scholars with them to be as witnesses and directors of their actions. In foul weather it would not be amiss for them to learn to dance, that is, to learn just so much (for all

beyond is superfluous, if not worse,) as may give them a graceful comportment of their bodies.

Upon Sundays, and, all days of devotion, they are to be a part of the chaplain's province.

That for all these ends the College so order it, as that there may be some convenient and pleasant houses thereabouts, kept by religious, discreet, and careful persons, for the lodging and boarding of young scholars, that they have a constant eye over them to see that they be bred up there piously, cleanly, and plentifully, according to the proportion of their parents' expenses.

And that the College, when it shall please God either by their own industry and success, or by the benevolence of patrons, to enrich them so far as that it may come to their turn and duty to be charitable to others, shall at their own charges erect and maintain some house or houses for the entertainment of such poor men's sons whose good natural parts may promise either use or ornament to the commonwealth, during the time of their abode at school, and shall take care that it shall be done with the same conveniences as are enjoyed even by rich men's children, (though they maintain the fewer for that cause,) there being nothing eminent and illustrious to be expected from a low, sordid, and hospitallike education.

CONCLUSION.

If I be not much abused by a natural fondness to my own conceptions, (that Sopy of the Greeks, which no other language has a proper word for,) there was never any project thought upon, which deserves to meet with so few adversaries as this; for who can without impudent folly oppose the establishment of twenty well selected persons in such a condition of life, that their whole business and sole profession may be to study the improvement and advantage of all other professions, from that of the highest general even to the lowest artisan? Who shall be obliged to employ their whole time, wit, learning, and industry, to these four, the most useful that can be imagined, and to no other ends: First, to weigh, examine, and prove all things of nature delivered to us by former ages, to detect, explode, and strike a censure through all false moneys with which the world has been paid and cheated so long, and (as I may say) to set the mark of the College upon all true coins, that they may pass hereafter without any farther trial. Secondly, to recover the lost inventions, and, as it were, drowned lands of the ancients. Thirdly, to improve all arts which we now have; and lastly, to discover others, which we yet have not. And who shall besides all this (as a benefit by-the-by) give the best education in the world (purely gratis) to as many men's children as shall think fit to make use of the obligation. Neither does it at all check or interfere with any parties in state or religion, but is indifferently to be embraced by all differences in opinion, and can hardly be conceived capable (as many good institutions have done) even of degeneration into any thing harmful. So that, all things considered, I will suppose this proposition will encounter with no enemies; the only question is, whether it will find friends enough to carry it on from discourse and design to reality and effect; the necessary expenses of the beginning (for it will maintain itself well enough afterwards) being so great (though I have set them as low as is possible in order to so vast a work) that it may seem hopeless to raise such a sum out of those few dead relics of human charity and public generosity which are yet remaining in the world.

EXTRACTS FROM AN ESSAY ON AGRICULTURE, BY A. COWLEY. There is no other sort of life that affords so many branches of praise to a panegyrist the utility of it to a man's self: the usefulness or rather necessity of it to all the rest of mankind: the innocence, the pleasure, the antiquity, the dignity. The utility (I mean plainly the lucre of it) is not so great now in our nation as arises from merchandise and the trading of the city, from whence many of the best estates and chief honors of the kingdom are derived: we have no men now fetched from the plow to be made lords, as they were in Rome to be made consuls and dictators, the reason of which I conceive to be from an evil custom, now grown as strong among us as if it were a law, which is, that no men put their children to be bred up apprentices in agriculture, as in other trades, but such who are so poor, that when they come to be men, they have not wherewithal to set up in it, and so can only farm some small parcel of ground, the rent of which devours all but the bare subsistence of the tenant: whilst they who are proprietors of the land, are either too proud, or for want of that kind of education, too ignorant to improve their estates, though the means of doing it be as easy and certain in this as in any other track of commerce. If there were always two or three thousand youths for seven or eight years bound to this profession, that they might learn the whole art of it, and afterwards be enabled to be masters in it, by a moderate stock, I can not doubt but that we should see as many aldermen's estates made in the country, as now we do out of all kind of merchandising in the city. There are as many ways to be rich, and which is better, there is no possibility to be poor, without such negligence as can neither have excuse nor pity; for a little ground will without question feed a little family, and the superfluities of life (which are now in some cases by custom made almost necessary) must be supplied out of the superabundance of art and industry, or contemned by as great a degree of philosophy. As for the necessity of this art, it is evident enough, since this can live without all others, and no one other without this. This is like speech, without which the society of men can not be preserved: the others like figures and tropes of speech which serve only to adorn it. Many nations have lived, and some do still, without any art but this; not so elegantly, I confess, but still they live, and almost all the other arts which are here practiced, are beholding to this for most of their materials.

The innocence of this life is the next thing for which I commend it, and if husbandmen preserve not that, they are much to blame, for no men are so free from the temptations of iniquity. They live by what they can get by industry from the earth, and others by what they can catch by craft from men. They live upon an estate given them by their mother, and others upon an estate cheated from their brethren. They live like sheep and kine by the allowances of nature, and others like wolves and foxes by the acquisitions of rapine. And, I hope, I may affrm (without any offense to the great) that sheep and kine are very useful, and that wolves and foxes are pernicious creatures. They are, without dispute, of all men the most quiet and least apt to be inflamed to the disturbance of the commonwealth: their manner of life inclines them, and interest binds them to love peace. In our late mad and miserable civil wars, all other trades, even to the meanest, set forth whole troops, and raised up some great commanders, who became famous and mighty for the mischiefs they