— 
RECENT NATIONAL ENCOURAGEMENT. 337 
cabinets, although poor in some of the orders, are 
very rich in others. The funds set apart for the 
purchase of additions, are, as it is understood, very 
scanty; but the public have began to be liberal in 
donations, for they see they are taken care of, and 
they naturally prefer sending them to the British 
Museum, where their gifts can be viewed gra- 
tuitously, than giving them to other collections, the 
managers of which oblige them to pay for seeing 
their own presents. 
(237.) We must not omit, in this place, to notice 
two facts of recent occurrence, not so much from 
any great influence they have in themselves in re- 
trieving the national character from the stigma of 
indifference to science, but that every indication, 
however slight, of an awakened sense to the import- 
ance of the subject, must be hailed with pleasure. 
We allude to some of the highest dignitaries of 
science having had bestowed upon them “ the lowest — 
title that is given to the lowest benefactor of the 
nation, or to the humblest servant of the crown *,” 
and to the circumstance of one thousand pounds 
having been allotted by government to the execution 
of the zoological plates accompanying the volumes 
of the Fauna Americanit Boreali ; without this grant, 
indeed, the result of the zoological discoveries made 
by the Arctic expeditions of Franklin and Richard- 
son would never have been given to the world. It 
will ever be an honour attached to the name of 
Lord Goderich, that he was the first minister of the 

* Quarterly Review, No. 86. 
Z 
