Willis, then an eminent physician in Oxford, and divers others, continued such meetings in Oxford, and brought those studies into fashion there; meeting first at Dr. Petty's lodgings, in an apothecary's house, because of the convenience of inspecting drugs and the like, as there was occasion; and after his remove to Ireland (though not so constantly) at the lodgings of Dr. Wilkins, then Warden of Wadham College; and after his removal to Trinity College in Cambridge, at the lodgings of the Honourable Mr. Robert Boyle, then resident for divers years in Oxford. These meetings in London continued, and after the king's return, in 1660, were increased with the accession of divers worthy and honourable persons, and were afterwards incorporated by the name of the _Royal Society_, and so continue to this day." Boyle was only about twenty years of age when he wrote his "Free Discourse against Swearing;" his "Seraphic Love; or, Some Motives and Incentives to the Love of God;" and his "Essay on Mistaken Modesty." "Seraphic Love" was the last of a series of treatises on love, but the only one of the series that he published, as he considered the others too trifling to be published alone or in conjunction with it. In a letter to Lady Ranelagh, he refers to his laboratory as "a kind of Elysium," and there were few things which gave him so much pleasure as his furnaces and philosophical experiments. In 1652 he visited Ireland, returning in the following summer. In the autumn he was again obliged to visit Ireland, and remained there till the summer of 1654, though residence in that country was far from agreeable to him. He styled it "a barbarous country, where chemical spirits were so misunderstood, and chemical instruments so unprocurable, that it was hard to have any hermetic thoughts in it." On his return he settled in Oxford, and there his lodgings soon became the centre of the scientific life of the university. Boyle and his friends may be regarded as the pioneers of experimental philosophy in this country. To Boyle the methods of Aristotle appeared little more than discussions on words; for a long time he refused to study the philosophy of Descartes, lest he should be turned aside from reasoning based strictly on the results of experiment. The method pursued by these philosophers had been fully discussed by Lord Bacon, but at best his experimental methods, though most complete and systematic, existed only upon paper, and it was reserved for Boyle and his friends to put the Baconian philosophy into actual practice.