Royal Society. 43 



reserving the tree always esteemed the peculiar pride and boast of 

 this island, for the construction of ships of war on the largest scale. 



Another individual remains, whom no technicality in regard to 

 pursuits can prevent our noticing with honour, on this occasion : 

 whose very deportment indicated the elegance of his mind j and 

 the justness of whose remarks on every thing connected with art, 

 gave assurance of the perfection invariably found to exist in all sub- 

 jects created by the touch of his magic pencil. 



Sir Thomas Lawrence stands proudly preeminent among native 

 artists, and perhaps among artists of the whole world, in that de- 

 partment to which he exclusively applied the powers of his genius : 

 nor would, 1 am persuaded, the great painter of the preceding age 

 have been unwilling to admit him as his equal in the delineation of 

 portraits not the servile copies of individual features, but poetic 

 likenesses, where every excellence is heightened, where the mind is de- 

 pictured, and where the particular person seems to embody the class 

 of virtues, of intellectual powers, or of amiable qualities designating 

 the moral order in which he is arranged. 



This constitutes unquestionably a department of historical paint- 

 ing, not inferior, perhaps, nor even less difficult of acquirement than 

 the others, where all is imaginary. 



The name of Reynolds must, and, 'for various reasons, ever will 

 stand first on the list of those who have cultivated in this country the 

 whole extent of an art, the most refined, requiring talents the most 

 rare, and at the same time the most delightful of all that have sprung 

 from the human mind j but that of Lawrence will be hailed by the 

 Academy as their Spes altera, and their Decus gemellum. 



I am not aware of the loss of any Fellow of the Society on our 

 Foreign List. 



Gentlemen, 



Your Council for the past year have awarded one of the Royal 

 Medals to Dr. Brewster, for his various communications on Light, 

 printed in the last volume of your Transactions. 



Unable as we are to investigate the real essences of physical bodies, 

 it is impossible nicely to discriminate their relative importance by 

 observing the external or accidental properties they may assume : 

 but light is so preeminent in all its relations ; as the cause of vision j 

 in the rapidity of its flight, or of its vibration j in its connection 

 with heat ; in its adorning every thing in nature by a secondary 

 quality ; that no more could be wanting to secure its place at the 

 head of that class of transcendant or imponderable substances, which 

 appear to animate the material world. 



Other properties have, however, been recently discovered, not less 

 wonderful than those that were previously known, and which promise 

 to decide the long agitated question between corpuscular projection 

 and the vibration of a fluid at once inconceivably elastic and rare. 



In all these discoveries Dr. Brewster has taken an ample share. 

 And as a public testimony of the sense entertained by the Royal 

 Society of their importance, and of his ability and exertions, I have 

 the honour of presenting to him the Royal Medal. 



G 2 The 



