1831.] A/airs in General. 323 



' has trod on the wires of the spring-gun at last, and we shall soon be 

 able to ascertain whether his dexterity will help him to escape the dis- 

 charge. His partizans now complain furiously of the baseness of perse- 

 cuting the rabble-cause in the courts. But, of all the scorners on the 

 present occasion, there has not been one more ready to fly to the ven- 

 geance of the law on every occasion than the great Agitator himself. 

 Actions against newspapers were his daily threat ; and if Sir Henry 

 Hardinge could have been extinguished by the fulmination of writs and 

 warrants, he would have been in the other world six months ago. We 

 remember the following " announcement of action :" 



{t I never will submit to such audacity ; and I here promise that I will never 

 cease to pursue the miscreants, shall I call them ? no, that would he too 

 hard a phrase ; but I will call them the despicable, base, miserable, paltry 

 creatures, with bad heads and worse hearts, who issued that nefarious procla- 

 mation in that place, where, and at that period when, reason shall be listened 

 to. I do riot mean to say that I shall be attended to in the rotten, borough- 

 mong-ering- Parliament. But I trust the day is not far distant when reason 

 shall be heard, and when fine and imprisonment shall mark the foul conduct of 

 Secretary Major-General Sir H. Hardinge. He usurped the prerogative of the 

 Lord Lieutenant alone greater, I admit, than any that the King is invested 



with ; and I have no hesitation in stating that for this he is indictable at 

 j aw /> ******** 



A paragraph in the Literary Gazette, states a circumstance that may 

 be worth attending to on the part of those who are interested in the 

 reputation of British science : 



Cf The late Earl of Bridgewater, whose eccentricities furnished gossip for 

 the frequenters of half the salons of Paris last year, bequeathed several thou- 

 sand pounds sterling to the writers of the best essay on the Structure of the 

 Earth, and on the Human Hand. His Lordship, at the same time, nominated 

 the President and Council of the Royal Society, Somerset-House, for the time 

 being, to judge of the respective merits of the various essays which might be 

 submitted by competitors who were expected to start, not only in this country, 

 but also on the Continent a circumstance which, at the time, not a little 

 alarmed the Royal Society, who imagined that a considerable run would be 

 made upon their funds for postage, so numerous and distant were the 

 applications anticipated to turn out : Berlin, Gottingen, Paris, Vienna, Copen- 

 hagen, and many other learned abodes, were severally looked to. It is 

 believed the fears alluded to have not been realized, at least to so alarming an 

 extent ; and amongst the names of the competitors for the golden prize, whose 

 essays will shortly be submitted, are those of Professor Buckland, of Oxford, 

 who writes the geological part essay, " Structure of the Earth." For the 

 essay on " the Hand," Mr. Charles Bell takes the anatomical part, and Dr. 

 Roget the physiological. Should the joint labours of these gentlemen entitle 

 them to the legacy, they will, it is said, divide it amongst them." 



Now, if all this be correct in point of statement, we must take the liberty 

 of doubting its correctness in point of principle. Every body knows of 

 what nature the brains of the late Earl of Bridgewater were, and the 

 first question with any society of common sense should be, whether the 

 business were worth their entering into ? But the paragraph tells us 

 that three of the Fellows of the Royal Society are combining to do, 

 what none of them could do singly, and what the earl's bequest clearly 

 required to be done by one, and that the affair being thus comfortably 

 jobbed, the money is to be partitioned to the several performers. We 

 can scarcely believe this ; for in all instances of competition it is under- 



2 T 2 



