The feeling of the partisans of the latter side ran so high on this occasion, that Sir John Pringle had to resign the presidency of the Royal Society, which post he had ably filled since 1772, for making himself an advocate of points against balls. When the fever of the learned men had cooled down a little, it was resolved to settle the great question of points _versus_ balls by a series of experiments, to be held in the Pantheon, a large building in Oxford Street, dome-like in the interior. The arrangement, in fact, carried out under the direction of Mr. Wilson, leader of the ‘ball’ party, was to create an artificial thunderstorm--or, as it should properly be called, ‘lightning storm’--by means of powerful electrical batteries, to be discharged upon conductors of various forms. His Majesty George III., greatly interested in the subject, and cherishing fond hopes that cannon-balls would carry off the victory in the scientific dispute, as well as in the graver political one with Franklin’s countrymen, undertook to pay all the expenses of the Pantheon experiments, and they took place accordingly on an elaborate scale. But though prepared entirely with a view of showing the inefficiency of Dr. Franklin’s points, they proved absolutely the contrary. Artificial, like real, lightning clearly showed its preference for a lancet over a ball; it would glide down the former quietly, but fall heavily, mostly with an explosion, upon the latter. However, the question being in reality less a scientific controversy than a dispute arising from the fiery heat of political passions, it was by no means set at rest by the Pantheon trials. ‘Franklin rods’ were more than ever abhorred by a multitude of persons, learned and unlearned, after the great citizen of Philadelphia had set his hand, on July 4, 1776, to the declaration of independence of the ‘United States of America,’ and more than a quarter of a century had to elapse, a new generation of men growing up, before there arose clear and unimpassioned views about lightning conductors.