Hume says: "It was remarkable that no physician in Europe, who had reached the age of forty years, ever to the end of his life adopted Harvey's doctrine of the circulation of the blood, and that his practice in London diminished extremely, from the reproach drawn on him by that great and signal discovery. So slow is the progress in every science even when not opposed by factitious and superstitious prejudices." (Hume's "History of England.") When Buffon had published Natural History, in which was included his "Theory of the Earth," he was officially informed by the faculty of theology in Paris that several of his propositions were "reprehensible and contrary to the creed of the church." And when Columbus asserted the rotundity of the earth, he was ridiculed by the clergy, who maintained that "everything would roll off on the other side and be consumed in the fires of hell, if the world should turn over." Benjamin Franklin's experiments with the lightning, were condemned, as he was only invoking upon himself the wrath of an angry God. Professor Morse was freely ridiculed by the clergy for his attempt to construct a telegraph. Roger Bacon, who invented spectacles and improved the telescope, was accused of having "sold himself to the devil." It is scarcely necessary to recall the persecutions of Copernicus, Bruno, and Galileo on account of their discoveries in astronomy. At Eaton, in Shelly's time, "Chemistry was a forbidden thing." We read in the life of Locke that "there was a meeting of the heads of the houses of Oxford, where it was proposed to censure and discourage the reading of this essay (On the Human Understanding) and after various debates, it was concluded that without any public censure each head of a house should endeavor to prevent its being read in his own college." (Spencer's "Social Statics," p. 375.) "With respect to the last, the grandest of all human undertakings (that is the circumnavigation of the earth) it is to be remembered that Catholicism had irrevocably committed itself to the dogma of a flat earth, with the sky as a floor of heaven, and hell in the under world." (Draper's "Conflict," p. 294.) The clergy for years have ridiculed Darwinism, and scouted the philosophy of evolution, even after the best minds of Europe had accepted it. But after all their ridicule of Darwinism, when Darwin had passed away the great heart of England did not fail to show the esteem in which the people at large held him, but lovingly laid his remains to rest in Westminster abbey with the dust of her noblest dead.