Boyle was still in Oxford in November, when the Duke of York and “many gallants” were going off to join the Fleet; and in December, when the “mighty vote” of £2,500,000 was passed, that Charles II might “be possessed of the dominion at sea, and the disposal of Trade.”[288] Everybody in London was feeling very rich and belligerent—the exact methods by which the money was to be raised not having been yet decided upon. That same November, Oldenburg was begging for Boyle’s communications to the Society on the _History of Cold_. They would come, as he said, very seasonably, “Our Society having already, by the late Frost, excited one another to the prosecution of experiments of freezing.” The frost lasted long enough to please the little London boys and the Philosophers alike. January came in, with “excessive sharp frost and snow.”[289] The London streets were full of snowballs on January 2, when Mr. Pepys dined in the Piazza, Covent Garden, with my Lord Brouncker—who was a great many other things besides President of the Royal Society,—and occasioned such mirth by reading aloud to the company the “ballet” lately made “by the men at sea to the ladies in town.” Who does not remember Buckhurst’s— “To all ye ladies now on land We men at sea indite; But first would have you understand How hard it is to write. The Muses now, and Neptune too, We must implore to write to you, With a fa la la la la!” And it is very certain Lord Brouncker and his company laughed loudest over the second verse— “For though the Muses should prove kind And fill our empty brain, Yet if rough Neptune rouse the wind To wave the azure main, Our paper, pen, and ink, and we Roll up and down our ships at sea, With a fa la la la la!”