CONTINENTAL PATRONAGE. $49 
the reigning family to science and literature is well 
known; and has spread its vivifying influence to the 
institutions and the philosophers of that kingdom. 
Not to mention the celebrated Humboldt, who has 
been loaded with honorary and pecuniary rewards, 
and Lichtenstein, the learned and accomplished tra- 
veller and naturalist, a long list might be given of 
other names, celebrated in different departments of 
science, who repose in the sunshine of royal favour, 
and are enabled to devote themselves, “in learned 
leisure,” to the investigation of abstract truth. It 
is a fact well known, that, at “the congress of 
German naturalists and philosophers, which took 
place at Berlin in 1828, the attachment of the King 
and of the royal family of Prussia to the sciences 
was most strikingly displayed. On the evening of 
the first day of the meeting, Baron Humboldt, the 
celebrated traveller, and chamberlain to the King, 
gave a large soirée in the concert-room attached to 
the theatre. Nearly twelve hundred persons of rank 
and talent were assembled on this occasion ;,and the 
King of Prussia himself honoured this illustrious 
assembly with his presence. Several princes of 
foreign states, the Prussian nobility, and the foreign 
ambassadors, were also present. The princes of the 
blood mingled with the cultivators of science, and 
the heir-apparent to the Prussian throne was seen 
in earnest conversation with the philosophers of his 
own or other kingdoms that were most celebrated for 
their talents and their genius.”* Science in all its 
* When Hogarth, indignant at the apathy of our court 
towards artists and the arts, dedicated his celebrated print of 
