Sir Joseph Banks, Bart. W 



that his influence was not exerted in a prejudicial mannei*. 

 The very collection of the Memoirs of the Society, upon which 

 the president might, without exaggeration, be supposed to pos- 

 sess a more effectual influence than upon the progress of science, 

 has evidently assumed a greater degree of richness ; it has ap- 

 peared more regularly, and under a form more worthy of so 

 beautiful a work. It was also in Sir Joseph's time that the So- 

 ciety itself began to be better treated by the government, and 

 that it occupied, in one of the royal palaces, apartments worthy 

 of a body which does so much honour to the nation. 



It was impossible for services like these not to be at length 

 acknowledged by impartial men : the public opinion proclaimed 

 them, and the government was obliged to proclaim them also. 

 Raised to the dignity of Baronet in 1781, decorated in 179^ with 

 the Order of the Bath, one of the first among those who were 

 neither peers of the realm, nor provided with great military of- 

 fices, Sir Joseph was, in 1797, named Counsellor of State, which, 

 in England, gives a distinguished rank, and the appellation of 

 Right Honourable, which is not without some importance in 

 a country where etiquette has its sway. 



To him, however, it was merely a title, but this title was a fa- 

 vour, and it needed not more to awaken envy again. Already, 

 on his return from Otaheite, a wag had addressed to him a he- 

 roic poem in the name of Queen Oberea ; on another occasion, 

 he was made to offer an urgent prayer to God to multiply insects, 

 as at the time of the plagues of Egypt ; and now, pretending 

 that he was admitted to real political counsels, he was repre- 

 sented as running after butterflies, while his colleagues were de- 

 liberating upon the interests of Europe. The only remedy ap- 

 plicable to bites like these was to laugh at them, and it was this 

 he employed. 



If he did not act ofiicially as a political counsellor, he was not 

 the less a real and a very useful counsellor to the King. He 

 partook in his rural occupations ; he made him acquainted with 

 the interesting productions of distant countries, and thus kept 

 up in him that taste for nature, which had already brought so 

 many acquisitions to science, and which continued to do more 

 for it in proportion as the example of the prince was imitated 

 by the great. It is thus that for thirty years England has^ 



OCTOBER DECEMBER 1826. M 



