Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/248

236 October, 1582, should be called the 15th, and, to correct the annual gain of eleven minutes, that every hundredth year should not be called a leap-year, excepting every four hundredth, beginning with the year 2000. All the Catholic powers immediately adopted the Pope's brief, but the Protestant countries, in their intense hatred of all that pertained to popery, refused to accept for a long time this evidently superior calendar. It was nearly two centuries before England accepted the New Style, and was the last of the European governments to surrender, except Russia, which clings to the Old Style to this day. Late as it was, the Royal Society, for recommending the change, shared in the opprobrium which fell upon the ministry who adopted it.

Whenever the prime minister appeared in public, mobs surrounded his carriage, demanding that he restore the days by which they supposed he had shortened their lives. When Astronomer Royal Bradley took sick and died amid the popular excitement, his death was believed to be a judgment of Heaven. This popular indignation extended even to the second generation; for when the son of Lord Macclesfield was standing for Parliament in the county of Oxford, the rabble greeted his appearance with the taunting words: "Give us back, you rascal, those eleven days which your father stole from us!"

In 1753 Franklin's electrical experiments won for him the Copley medal, a rare prize for one who was not a member of the Royal Society. In 1756 he enjoyed the further distinction of being elected Fellow, without having previously requested a member to propose his name, which had been the almost invariable custom and rule. Forasmuch as the society had elected Franklin without any advance on his part, it was considered but a graceful thing for it to release him from all annual dues, which was done. Franklin, on his part, fully repaid the society for its favors by frequently contributing to its "Transactions." When medals and honorary memberships in all the learned societies had been conferred upon him, when he had become the most talked-of and courted scientist in Europe, when his attentions conferred rather than received honors, even during the period of the Revolutionary War, Franklin kept up his friendly correspondence with members of the Royal Society, and the society rendered itself worthy of grateful remembrance by every American in its brave stand against lending itself to a narrow-minded sovereign to break down Franklin's scientific reputation.

Franklin's electrical experiments had led to his discovery of lightning-rods, of the power of rods and points to carry off safely the electrical shock. The accuracy of his experiments was generally conceded, but Abbé Nollet, in France, opposed the points and declared that the rods should be blunt. A Mr. Wilson raised the