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turned to the following points, and generally in the order below:

1. Whose interests will be affected by the admission of this candidate, and how?

2. What is his personal disposition?-is he turbulent and intractable, or is he likely to go well in harness?

3. Are those Fellows who signed his certificate one and all 'of us'?

4. Were we to reject him, do they feel sufficient interest in his admission to lead them to resent his exclusion?

5. Is it safer and wiser, on the part of the Society, (i. e. the Council,) in case of his having a mind and spirit of his own, to admit and try to train him, or to send him back with the black-ball stigma' on him?

And, 6. What real pretension do his writings and his discoveries give him to aspire to the distinguished honour which he seeks?

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We have already seen that if the candidate belong to the aristocracy or to the millionocracy his election is a matter of course, since he will pay his fees and give no further trouble; and if he belong to the schoolmaster tribe' or its collateral classes, he is sure to be rejected, whatever his scientific, moral, or literary qualifications may be. The legal candidate is pretty sure to get in, except some learned brother of the long robe,' who is already a Fellow, shall happen to get up a little intrigue amongst the Councillors to keep him out. Divines, too, are tolerably safe candidates, especially if they have been University tutors, or are in favour with their right reverend diocesan and have fair expectations of the next presentation to a twothousand-a-year incumbency. Military men find it easy enough to be made Fellows,' with a Colby and a Sabine to enforce their claims; and it has, till lately, been still more easy for naval officers to obtain the envied distinction through the influence exercised by the Board of Admiralty and its factotum, Captain Beaufort.*

* We have said lately, for the anomaly has occurred of a captain in the Royal Navy who has been knighted for his services in the scientific branch of the profession,' and whose observations have been communicated to the Royal Society by the Board of Admiralty, and printed in the Philosophical Transactions, being proposed as a Fellow, and-black-bulled! We refer to Captain Sir Edward Belcher. Can this be accounted for by any of the ordinary principles which govern honourable minds? Another occasion will serve us better than the present to unravel this remarkable circumstance. Perhaps the Council will give their own explanation; we shall be glad to see it.

Fellows of certain other Societies-the Society of Antiquaries and Royal Academicians for instance- are, by a tacit understanding, convertible into Royal Fellows, provided they either stand well or are nonentities in their own Societies; and some useful and valuable members' have found their way into the Society by feeding the Royal Lions who have perambulated the country in attendance on the annual sessions of the British Association. Members of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, of Durham and Dublin, are sure of admission,that is, if they apply. This has, however, almost ceased to be the case of late years with resident members of Oxford and Cambridge, arising from the small value which they attach to the Society's diploma; but those of the Scottish Universities find it no easy matter, except they have extraneous interest, to procure a place on the Royal Society's rolls-they are too near the University of Durham, and too dangerous rivals to it!

The medical class of Fellows has always been a predominating one in the Society. Mr. Babbage + truly states that 'the honour of belonging to the Royal Society is much sought after by medical men, as contributing to the success of their professional efforts, and two consequences result from it. In the first place, the pages of the Transactions of the Royal Society occasionally contain medical papers of very moderate merit; and, in the second, the preponderance of the medical interest introduces into the Society some of the jealousies of that profession.'

The consequence is, as estimated by Dr. Granville,‡ in 1835,

*Professor Airy did not become a Fellow of the Royal Society till he was, by his appointment as Astronomer Royal, placed in the focus of royal science, and found the Fellowship would be a personal convenience to him. As a member of the University he did not think the honour worth its cost; and many of the most able and eminent of the Cambridge men, for a similar reason, are not Fellows.

Reflections on the Decline of Science in England, and some of its Causes. 1830. P. 98. 4to edition.

The Royal Society in the Nineteenth Century.' 1836. We well remember the unusual bustle (for the ordinary dronish meetings of the Society) created on the evening of the presentation of this book. Upon the title being read, Mr. Archibald Stephens, a special pleader, rose and delivered a long harangue, depreciatory of the principles, views, misstatements, libels, and what not, of the author, and moved That the Society do decline the acceptance of Dr. Granville's book.' Several Fellows spoke on the question-some temperately, others intemperately-some wisely, some unwisely; but the debate was closed by the junior secretary in one of the most snappish and uncourteous tirades (his utterance almost choked by ill-suppressed rage) that it has been our lot to witness even from this proverbially rude functionary. The book was of course not placed on the shelves of the Society; and the Council took the advice

that at least one-seventh of the entire number of Fellows of the Royal Society were graduated medical men, either physicians, pure surgeons, or general practitioners; and it is generally understood that this preponderance has of late been much on the increase.

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Now, that this profession contains several men of high intellect, cultivated minds, philosophical research, and rare moral endowments, we have the happiness to know. They are for the most part, however, men of moderate education rather than distinguished scholarship; having a cursory general acquaintance with many subjects, rather than a profound knowledge of any one. Their minds are formed on the principle of aggregating fragments of information from all possible sources, and applying them to their professional art, rather than on the principle of following out an independent investigation tending to the solution of a great and single difficulty in science. fact, they are in their mental habits and actual acquirements quick rather than profound; miscellaneous rather than solid; empirical rather than exact; inductive rather than demonstrative. We may say more, that many of those who have acquired the highest reputation for their professional talent have been only professionally eminent; and that, valuable as their prescriptions or operations had rendered them to society, they had little claim to distinction on any other than professional ability; and that their skill in their profession had no more right to be rewarded with the glory of scientific renown, than a clever mechanic to be similarly rewarded for superior skill in his practical trade.

The jealousy of the medical profession is too proverbial to need much illustration-it is so ingrained with the profession that he is no common character that can rise above this moral and social bane. True, there is an oath administered at the time of conferring the medical diplomas, that the M.D. or M.R.C.S. shall uphold the dignity of the profession, and not degrade a professional brother; but when an oath is formally required to enforce the fundamental principles which regulate the intercourse of one gentleman with another, it bespeaks an acknowledged general tendency to infringe the established laws of courtesy and honor. All professional persons have, however, an esprit du corps; and when this is at stake, they will even patch up their professional jealousies for the purpose of carrying the ascendancy. To accomplish this, they have, as occasion

of their more cautious friends, and treated its charges with silent contempt'as is usual, when unanswerable and unpalatable truths are advanced at Somerset House.

served, increased their phalanx at Somerset House; and we believe there is no one question in which, if the profession were generally interested, their influence would not be triumphant.* How far that jealousy operates which arises out of relative success in respect of medical practice, whether with the consulting physicians and surgeons, or with general practitioners, it would be beside our present purpose to inquire; but it is allowed on all hands that it does exist to a degree unexampled in other professions or in mercantile life. So long, however, as this jealousy is that of individual towards individual, there is much to lament but little to dread from its social effects; and, in fact, as far as the Royal Society is concerned, this forms a partially neutralising effect upon the esprit du corps to which we have already referred. Within the present century, and especially of late years, a set of little knots of interests has been gradually growing up, which tends effectually to increase this disunion amongst the higher class of physicians and surgeons. We refer to the London hospitals as schools of anatomy and medicine, and to which the most eminent men in the profession are attached as lecturers, demonstrators, curators, &c. Whilst, therefore, the body forms an indestructible phalanx to maintain its common interests in the Society, its little coteries evince the most determined and often unscrupulous opposition to each other's little classes of special interests. The ablest medical men in the Society have little, often no private practice; and they depend for their income upon the fees paid by the hospital pupils who attend their respective lectures. The lecturers on some other subjects, as chemistry, botany, and natural philosophy, of the metropolis, are also

* In the present Council, November 30th, 1844, (which by a pleasant fiction is said to be 'elected,') there are no less than seven medical men-two others belonging to the corps as chemical lecturers-and four geologists, whose dependence in many of their speculations upon the comparative anatomist for information, places them always in the wake of the medical interest! There are thus thirteen out of the twenty-one members of the present Council that are more or less 'like a shoal of lobsters, clung together by the claws.' Physical and mathematical science generally is represented by four members of Council, two of whom are incapable of frequent attendance from their distant locality; one is the head of a large banking firm, and consequently we should think not able to give very close attention to the affairs of the Royal Society; and the last (the Secretary) is absolutely unknown in the world as a mathematician of more than commonplace attainments. Of Mr. Brunel as an engineer, Mr. Dollond as an instrument-maker, and Captain Ross as a naval commander, it would perhaps be impossible to speak too highly; but of Lord Wrottesley we know absolutely nothing. We would ask, what is it that constitutes them fit members of the Council of the Royal Society, which has to decide upon the merits of papers devoted to scientific research?

included in the same little spheres of interest. University College and King's College have established their hospitals only as schools of medical study for their own pupils--not from any motives of philanthropy; and in these two colleges themselves the yellow fever' of the hospital system is developed in its worst forms.

This good-natured, but not very enlightened, world of ours is governed very much by appearances;-by pretensions made to eminence; and by insinuations of the incompetence of our professional competitors. The great majority of medical students are the sons of country tradesmen who are 'moderately wellto-do in the world,' and who have withal the ambition of seeing their sons occupy a 'station in life.' They choose their hospital from the popular reputation of its teachers; and as the Royal Society arrogates to itself the function of saying who is or who is not eminent through the medium of its diploma, it is evidently of the first importance to the hospital professionals to become Fellows, and, if possible, Fellows to be talked of.

There thus exists in the metropolis a vast number of small bodies of men, enjoying the reputation of being scientific, (and who form the real portion of the Society's active members,) who, whilst they have many interests in common, have yet very deep interests antagonistic to each other; and it will be obvious how, in respect to a medical candidate, the half-dozen questions at p. 360 will be brought into play. Here it is that the jealousies of the profession will operate with all their intensity. We need not describe the canvassing and intriguing that immediately follow the announcement of a candidate connected in any way with any particular hospital-even only as a pupil, if he shall happen to have distinguished himself as such!*

* There was formerly a University faction in the Royal Society, but this has been so completely crushed by the medico-chirurgical, that it has disappeared altogether. One or two Cambridge men, indeed, whose professional duties are fixed in London, are still active Fellows; but they act in the Society rather because London is their sphere of action, than because they are members of the University. Apart from this motive, there is scarcely a Cambridge man of any reputation who acts on its Councils, or takes the least interest in its affairs; and although the Society 'nominates and elects' such men as the Dean of Ely and the Master of Trinity upon its Council, they do but rarely attend, and never take an active part in its business. Cambridge, indeed, has done wisely in establishing its own Philosophical Society'a society that has done good service in respect to the particular branches of science which are more immediately and professedly cultivated there-a society to which we wish well, and bid it God speed!

There are gradually forming, however, sundry little knots of interests in the Royal Society, apart from those of the Hospital firms; as, for instance, the civil engineers, the insurance actuaries, the manufacturing chemists, and the

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