APPROPRIATE OFFICES FOR SCIENTIFIC MEN. 389 
several official situations; and her universities, be- 
sides the ordinary chairs for professional education, 
might have contained others, which, while they at- 
tracted men of great name within their precincts, 
left them sufficient leisure to pursue their researches. 
All this might have been expected in England, for 
this simple reason, because it is found in other 
countries, less able and less called upon, to be 
liberal to their philosophers. But how stands the 
case with us? The Board of Longitude became 
almost useless, from being occupied by unscientific 
men; it was thus brought inte disrepute, and was 
abolished in 1828. Of the three lighthouse Boards, 
“ by that fatality which impends over every British 
institution,” not one of all the numerous members 
and officers is a man of science, or is even ac- 
quainted with those branches of optics which re- 
gulate the condensation and distribution of that 
element which it is their sole business to diffuse 
over the deep. That boards so constituted are 
totally disqualified to judge of improvements or in- 
ventions offered for their adoption, is quite natural. 
There is a remarkable instance recorded by the 
writer we have just quoted*, wherein the inventor 
of a new compound lens, after vainly endeavouring 
to draw the attention of our boards to his discovery, 
had the mortification of seeing it claimed some 
years after by a learned foreigner, and universally 
introduced on the coasts of France as a new and 
important improvement in lighthouse illumination, 
while the lighthouses upon our shores, proverbially 

* Quarterly Review. 
ce 3 
