128 EARL DE GREY'S ADDRESS. [May 28, 1860. 



for many years as the Treasurer of tlie Eoyal Institution of Great 

 Britain. 



Those only who were intimately acquainted with Mr. Hamilton 

 could form an adequate idea of his valuable intrinsic qualities. 

 Void of all display, his knowledge on a vast variety of subjects was 

 profound and accurate ; and while he could control and manage 

 details of every-day business, he found time for much literary, anti- 

 quarian, and geographical research. He was als^ during twenty 

 years one of the most efiScient and useful trustees of the British 

 Museum, as all his associates have testified. In that great National 

 Eepository of art and natural science, he who had brought to it so 

 many of the finest works of Egyptian and Greek sculpture might 

 well look around him with a proud and pleasing retrospect. But 

 although he had desei-vedly acquired the name of Grecian Hamil- 

 ton, his preference for the finest productions of art never led him 

 to form a too exclusive estimate of the value of his favourite re- 

 searches. Though not a naturalist, he had the highest respect for 

 those who cultivated natural history ; and so equitable and fair 

 was he in his judgments, that those trustees who represented that 

 portion of the British Museum have uniformly rejoiced that Mr. 

 Hamilton was associated with them ; for in him they felt secure 

 that they could depend upon a man whose votes were always regu- 

 lated by the desire to promote not one only, but all the departments 

 of our great National Eepository. 



Having adverted to the career of Mr. Hamilton as a public 

 servant, and as a cultivator of letters and the fine arts, let us here 

 specially record our thanks to him for his well-performed duties as 

 a geographer. At the head of those duties we are bound grate- 

 fully to remember that in 1838, the first year of his Presidency, he 

 set the example of reading from the chair an Anniversary Address, 

 which practice, followed up by him in the succeeding year, and 

 never since departed from, has been one of the ef&cient means of 

 raising our Society to its present enviable position. We may well 

 therefore revert to that which may be called our inaugural discourse ; 

 for although we had then been a Society for seven years, and had 

 enjoyed the advantage of receiving Annual Eeports from our able 

 Secretaries, we still lacked that enlarged view of our general ob- 

 jects which was first eloquently put before us by Mr. Hamilton. 

 After developing all the links which bind Geography to History 

 and Statistics, as well as to the sciences of Astronomy, Geometry, 

 Natural History, and Geology, and showing that such researches 



