Some portion of it is due to that improper deference which was long paid to every dictum of the President, and much of it to that natural indisposition to take trouble on any point in which a man's own interest is not immediately concerned.

It is to be hoped, for the credit of that learned body, that no anticipation of the next feast of St.Andrew ever influenced the taciturnity of their disposition.

[It may be necessary to inform those who are not members of the Royal Society, that this is the day on which those Fellows who choose, meet at Somerset House, to register the names of the Council and Officers the President has been pleased to appoint for the ensuing year; and who afterwards dine together, for the purpose of praising each other over wine, which, until within these few years, was PAID for out of the FUNDS of the Society.

This abuse was attacked by an enterprising reformer, and of course defended by the coterie.

It was, however, given up as too bad.