In the autumn of 1653, Wren, then just twenty-one, was elected to a fellowship at All Souls, and happy in the comparative tranquillity of Oxford, pursued the various studies which he loved. All this time he was 'making himself,' as was said of Sir Walter Scott in his childhood on the Scotch hills, though perhaps at the time no one could have guessed the particular manner in which he would distinguish himself. In the following summer he made acquaintance with John Evelyn, who had come up to Oxford to hear the 'Philosophy Act.' Evelyn mentioned that after a dinner at All Souls he 'visited that miracle of a youth Mr. Christopher Wren, nephew to the Bishop of Ely.'[60] 'A day or two later Evelyn dined with 'that most obliging and universally curious Dr. Wilkins at Wadham College, who showed him his "transparent apiaries, built like castles, and so ordered one upon another as one might take the honey without hurting the bees," his "hollow statue, which gave a voice and uttered words, by a long, concealed pipe that went to its mouth, whilst one speaks through it at good distance;" and his gallery filled with mathematical and other curiosities; a "thermometer," still a curiosity, though fifty-two years had elapsed since Galileo invented the first; a "way-wiser," which, when placed in a coach, exactly measured the miles it travelled, and showed them by an index; "a monstrous magnet," and many other inventions, most of them of his owne and that prodigious young scholar, Mr. Christopher Wren, who presented me with a piece of white marble which he had stained with a lively red very deepe, as beautiful as if it had been natural.' The acquaintance thus made with Christopher Wren ripened into a friendship lasting until Evelyn's death in 1706. Dr. Wilkins was also of Evelyn's friends, though he was very submissive to Cromwell.[61] It is curious to contrast two accounts which occur in the same page of Evelyn's diary. '_December 25, 1655._ There was no more notice taken of Christmas Day in churches. I went to London, where Dr. Wild preached the funeral sermon of Preaching, this being the last day, after which Cromwell's proclamation was to take place, that none of the Church of England should dare either to preach or administer Sacraments, teach schoole etc. on paine of imprisonment or exile. So this was the mournfullest day that in my life I had seene, or the Church of England herselfe since the Reformation; to the greate rejoicing of both Papist and Presbyter. So pathetic was his discourse (on 2 Cor. xiii. 9) that it drew many teares from the auditory. Myself, wife, and some of our family received the Communion; God make me thankfull that hath hitherto provided for us the food of our soules as well as bodies! The Lord Jesus pity our distressed Church, and bring back the captivity of Sion!