the side lines of a survey, if the required distance exceeded or fell short a little of any water-course, or other natural object, these lines were always contracted or extended so as to terminate at this object, altho' the length of the lines was still represented to be one mile or 320 poles. Arbitrary allowances too were made for useless lands, and for the errors necessarily caused by the attempt to extend a surveyor's chain through the thick brushwood of a primitive forest. These errors and inaccuracies, render it always difficult and sometimes impossible to determine now the original limits of an old grant, with accurate precision. The most exact adjustment of these limits that can now be made, will very rarely present an area the quantity of which corresponds precisely with that called for by the grant. This quantity generally exceeds that within the adjusted boundaries, although the reverse is sometimes found to be the case. The remarks made above, will suffice to explain the causes of all such diversities.

There is no life on earth but being in love!
There are no studies, no delights, no business,
No intercourse, or trade of sense, or soul,
But what is love! I was the laziest creature,

The most unprofitable sign of nothing,
The veriest drone, and slept away my life
Beyond the dormouse, till I was in love!
And now I can out-wake the nightingale,
Out-watch an usurer, and out-walk him too,
Stalk like a ghost that haunted 'bout a treasure ;
And all that fancied treasure, it is love!-Ben Jonson.

From the British Quarterly Review.

THE ROYAL SOCIETY.

This article, besides its own interest, has a certain bearing upon the history of science and letters, and the progress of society, in our colony and state, (as may be seen hereafter,) which makes it, we think, particularly proper for insertion in our pages.

It is reported of Thomas Carlyle that he once half-jestingly declared his intention of writing a life of Charles II, as one who was no sham or half man, but the perfect specimen of a bad king. Charles, however, if he did no other good thing, founded the Royal Society, and by so doing saved his portrait from being cut out in untinted black, by the stern humorist's scissors.

The thoughtless monarch, no doubt, did as little for science as he well could. The only incident in his life which can be referred to as indicating a personal interest in it, is his sending the society a recipe for the cure of hydrophobia, but the act was probably prompted as much by his love of dogs as his love of science. Sheer carelessness on his part appears to have been the cause of the society's not obtaining confiscated lands in Ireland, which he was willing it should possess, and which would have ultimately yielded an ample revenue. The members besought him for apartments where they might meet and keep their library, curiosities, and apparatus. Charles at last gave them a dilapidated college and grounds at Chelsea; but characteristically enough, it turned out that the property was only in part his to give; and the society finding it had inherited little else than a multitude of law suits, was glad to restore the college to government, and accept a small sum in exchange. Yet Charles did more for science, at a time too when royal patronage was a precious thing, than many wiser and better monarchs have done, and it would be difficult to discover any sinister or interested motive which the king had in assisting the philosopher. He probably did not pretend (except in the society's charters, which in all likelihood he never read) to revere science as truth, or covet it as power, but he could wonder at it as marvellous. It dealt in novelties, and he was too intelligent and inquisitive, not to be struck by them. It helped him through a morning to attend, on occasion, "An anatomical administration," at Gresham College, and see an executed criminal dissected. From time to time, also, the members of the Royal Society showed him their more

curious experiments, and Charles first smiled approbation, and then generally found something to laugh at, either in the experiment or the experimenter. It occasioned him no little diversion, as we learn from Pepys, to witness the philosophers "weighing of ayre." He had too strong and practised a sense of the ludicrous not to be keenly alive to the little pedantries and formalities of some of the fellows; and too little reverence in his nature to deny himself a laugh at their weaknesses and follies. He was sometimes, no doubt, entitled to his smile at the experimenter; and always, if he saw fit, at the experiment. For everything on this earth has its ludicrous, as well as its serious, aspect, and the grave man need not grudge the merry man his smile at what he thinks strange.

An experiment, too, was a thing on the result of which a bet could be laid as well, as on the issue of a game at cards or a cock-fight. The Royal Society was, on one occasion, instructed that "his majesty has wagered 50l. to 57. for the compression of air by water." A trial, accordingly, was made by one of its most distinguished members, and the king, as may be surmised, won his wager.

It is impossible to read the histories and eulogies of the Royal Society, without detecting in them, in spite of all their laudations of its kingly founder, a subdued, but irrepressible conviction, that by no address of the annalist can Charles II. be made to figure as an august patron and promoter of science. It is not that he will not brook comparison with such princes as Leo X., or the Florentine dukes. Charles could not be expected to equal them, but he took such pains to show that he had the progress of science as little at heart as the maintenance of personal virtue, or public morality, that he has baffled the most adroit royalist to say much in his praise. He was often expected at the public meetings of the society, but he never accomplished an official visit. He dreaded, no doubt, the formality and tediousness of the seance, and his presence might have recalled the caustic proverb, "Is Saul, too, among the prophets?"

Nevertheless, it might have fallen to the Royal Society's lot to have had a worse founder. Its seeds were sown and had even germinated in the days of James I., but the philosophers were fortunate in escaping the patronage of the most learned of the Stuarts. James would have plagued them as much as Frederick the Great did the savans he favored. His sacred majesty would have dictated to the wisest of them what they should discover, and how they should discover it. A wayward genius like Hooke would have paid many a visit to the Tower, or one to Tower Hill; and any refractory philosopher who persisted in interpreting a

phenomenon otherwise than the royal pedant thought he should interpret it, would have been summarily reminded of the " king's divine right to rule," and treated as a disloyal subject.

Charles I., we can well believe, looked on with measured interest at Harvey's dissection of the deer's heart, and demonstration of his great discovery of the circulation of the blood. Whatever that monarch's faults may have been, he had too religious a spirit not to have honored science, and too kingly a manner to have insulted its students. But his patronage would have compromized the liberties and lives of the philosophers during the civil war, and we should grudge now if the perversest cavalier among them had paid with his life for his scientific royalism.

The uncrowned king that followed the first Charles, had his hands too full of work, and his head and heart too much occupied with very different things, to have much patience with weighers of air, or makers of "solid glass bubbles." But a hint that they could have helped him to a recipe for "keeping his powder dry," or improved the build of his ships, or the practice of navigation, would at once have secured the favor of the sagacious protector. When the restoration came, however, such services to Cromwell would have procured for the philosophers a swift and bloody reward.

Things fell out, as it was, for the best. The infant society escaped the dangerous favors of king and protector, till the notice of royalty could only serve it: and then it received just as much of courtly favor as preserved it from becoming the prey of knavish hatchers of sham plots, and other disturbers of its peace; and so little of substantial assistance that its self-reliance and independence were not forfeited in the smallest. Charles the Second did the Royal Society the immense service of leaving it to itself, and an institution numbering among its members such men as Newton, Boyle, and Hooke, (to mention no others,) needed only security from interruption, and could dispense with other favors. And it had to dispense with them. The title of the society is apt to convey the impression that it had the government to lean upon, and was dowered from its treasury. But this was not the case. The society was not fondled into greatness by royal nursing. Charles' only bona fide gift to it, was what Bishop Horsley, in an angry mood, denounced as "that toy," the famous bauble mace, which the original warrant for its making, calls "one guilt mace of one hundred and fifty oz."

In return for this benefaction the society presented their patron with a succession of remarkable discoveries and inventions, which told directly on the commercial prosperity of his kingdom. The art, above all others the most important to this coun

try, navigation, owes its present perfection in great part to the experiments on the weight of the air, and on the rise and fall of the barometer, to the improvements in time-keepers, and the astronomical discoveries and observations which Boyle, Hooke, Newton, and other members of the Royal Society made during Charles the Second's reign. The one hundred and fifty ounces of silver gilt were returned to the treasury in his lifetime.

In exchange for the regal title which they received, the society made the monarch's reign memorable by the great discoveries which signalized that era, and under his nominal leadership won for him the only honorable conquests which can be connected with his name. Estimated in coin, or in honor, given and received, the king stands more indebted to the society than the society to him.

We will not, however, strive to lessen Charles' merit. The gift of the mace, "bauble" though it was, may be accounted a sincere expression of good will. It probably appeared to the donor, an act of self-denial to let so much bullion of the realm go past the profligates of both sexes, who emptied his pockets so much faster than he could fill them; and the deed may pass for a liberal one. We willingly make the most of it. Charles the Second's reign is, from first to last, such a soiled and blotted page, that we are thankful for one small spot, which, like the happy ancients, we can mark with white. CAROLUS SECUNDUS REX, we think of with contempt, and loathing or indignation; but Charles Stuart, F. R. S., meant on the whole well, and did some little good in his day.

Charles' connection with the Royal Society, however, is a small matter in its history. He was its latest name-giver, not its founder. If any single person can claim that honor, it is Lord Bacon, who, by the specific suggestions in his "New Atlantis," but also, and we believe still more, by the whole tenor of his "Novum Organum," and other works on science, showed his countrymen how much can be done for its furtherance, by the co-operation of many laborers. But even Bacon must share the honor with others; learned societies are not kingdoms which the monarchs of intellect found; but republics, which grow out of the common sympathies of many minds. Fraternity is the rule, though not equality, and there is no prating about liberty, for it is enjoyed by all.

A Bacon or a Descartes does not act on his fellows like a great magnet, attracting to itself all the congenial metal within its A brotherhood grows as a crystal does. Particle seeks out like particle, and the atoms aggregate into a symmetrical whole. The crystal, when completed, has not the same proper

range.