1907.] General Monthly Meeting. 529 



Resolved, That the Managers of the Royal Institution of Great Britain desire 

 to record their sen.se of the great loss the Institution has sustained in the decease 

 of their late Honorary Secretary to the Committee of Visitors, Lachlan Mackintosh 

 Rate, Esq., M.A. 



Mr. Rate was elected a Member of the Royal Institution in 1859. He always 

 took an active interest in the welfare of the Institution, and as a benefactor con- 

 tributed to its scientific work. His tact and business qualifications enabled him 

 to render invaluable services to the cause of Science, and the advancement of the 

 Institution, and for twenty-one years he discharged the laborious duties of Hono- 

 rary Secretary to the Committee of Visitors. 



The Managers desire to offer on behalf of the Members of the Royal Institution 

 the expression of their most sincere sympathy and heartfelt condolence with the 

 family in their bereavement. 



The following letters were read : — 



1 Stratton Street, W. 

 Dear Sir, February 9th, 1907. 



I have the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 8th inst. 

 enclosing a Resolution of the Managers of the Royal Institution of Great Britain 

 with reference to the death of the Baroness Burdett-Coutts. 



I beg you will assure the Managers of my appreciation of the terms of the 

 Resolution, and my gi-atitude for the expression of their personal sympathy in the 

 great loss I have sustained. 



I hope I may be permitted to add a few remarks pertinent to the special bearing 

 of the Resolution, and possibly not uninteresting to the Managers and Members of 

 the Royal Institution. I am perhaps the more entitled to such a privilege in 

 dealing with this important tribute to the Baroness's memory, not so much because 

 I am left by her express desire and act in the position of her sole representative, 

 as by reason of my long and close association with a public life which in its innei 

 aspects was otherwise a singulai^ly solitary one. 



The Baroness's social relationships to Science, her friendships with many, her 

 acquaintance with nearly all, of its eminent professors for the past 70 years, are 

 well known ; her efforts to encourage and aid those who were struggling in the 

 same path, not so well : as was her custom. But it probably is not known — at 

 least to this generation — that, without the equipment of a scientific training, she 

 had the keenest personal interest in Science ; she delighted to hear its problems 

 discussed, its discoveries explained ; and she never failed to follow, with an atten- 

 tion jealous of apathy or interruption, their learned exposition to those around 

 her. I cannot remember the time when the "man of Science," even one little 

 known at the moment or to the company, had not a special place at her table ; or 

 the occasion when her own attention, compelling that of others, did not give him 

 full opportunity. 



The Baroness was a great educationist. At a time before the State assumed 

 that obligation, she naturally devoted her efforts in that respect to the poorest 

 classes. The later phase of the question still found her in the same field, special- 

 ising those efforts in directions which the State has only recently begun to follow. 



But all the while she was mindful of the claims of science, less popular then 

 than now ; and in many ways little known, or not remembered, she brought her 

 ever- watchful eye, her discrimination, and her means, to bear on their advancement. 



If a scholarship was to be established at Oxford, not classics or histoiy, or even 

 theology, but Science claimed her aid. The great Dr. Routh, notoriously difficult 

 of access in his old age, received her at Magdalen as a young girl, bent on the 

 adventure from a party at Nuneham, and became her friend till he died. Yet 

 even that memory, rich in patristic learning, did not avail to })lace the Bodleian 

 Library as high in her affections as the University Museum. I would venture the 

 opinion that she believed the Pengelley collection of fossils, rightly studied, would 

 have more practical bearing on future human happiness than a gift of old manu- 

 scripts. 



Vol. XYIIl. (No. 101) 2 m 



