412 STUDY OF NATURAL HISTORY. 
losophers to the honour of knighthood, and the 
bestowal of a small pension upon another.* Ata time 
when the daily press teemed with invectives against 
the titled aristocracy, the existence of sinecures, 
and the granting of pensions, all parties in the king- 
dom, from the philosophic congress held at Cam- 
bridge down to the most violent of the radical 
papers, united with one heart and one voice in 
extolling these acts of national liberality, and in 
lamenting they were so seldom exercised. It is 
plain, therefore, that the nation at large, so far from 
participating in the indifference habitually shown by 
our government to the science of the country, 
applauds and approves of those honours occasionally 
bestowed upon its votaries. From whom, then, 
does this injustice proceed? Certainly not from the 
nation at large, or from its intellectual classes. 
Mr. Babbage has made it a subject of bitter com- 
plaint, and the Quarterly Review has, to use its 
own emphatic words, “unfolded a series of griev- 
ances of the most afflicting kind.” Murmurs and 
reproaches have spread wider and louder in propor- 
tion as they have been disregarded, until we now 
find them bursting forth in the parliament of the 
nation. 
(282.) On the recent discussion in the House of 
Commons as to restricting the Order of the Bath, a 
well-known member, decidedly opposed to all un- 
necessary expense or unmerited distinctions, is re- 
ported to have made the following sound and admir- 
able remarks :—‘‘ Although England was strictly a 
* See Proceedings of the British Association at Cambridge. 
