4.20 STUDY OF NATURAL HISTORY. 
distinction should be made*,” and that those out- 
ward signs or titles, which might be the reward of 
our scientific benefactors, should not be too common. 
Let them, therefore, be of such a description that 
they will be inaccessible to the army, the navy, 
the bar, the church, and the medical profession, 
unless individuals belonging to these professions, 
also possess scientific attainments. Under such 
restrictions, there is no fear of scientific honours 
being too common, if those only who deserve them 
are so distinguished. But once admit all these 
various professions, and the honour becomes nominal, 
and it will no longer be an object of ambition to the 
man of real knowledge. That some discrimination 
of this sort should be made, is abundantly evident. 
The truth is, that these professions already mono- 
* The government would have done well, perhaps, if they 
had followed up this principle of preserving “ distinctions” in 
the lavish profusion of honours stated to have been conferred of 
late years. ‘ Since the peace of 1816, no fewer than 97 
Knights Grand Crosses, 164 Knights Commanders, and a whole 
regiment of Companions of the Order of the Bath, have ap- 
pointed: these are all military and naval_men; and though 
the order does admit the civil servants and benefactors of the 
state, yet only 15 of this class have been appointed, and not 
one of these knights are men of either science or literature. 
In the long list of knight bachelors, we meet with a singular 
assemblage of characters. Judges, lawyers, soldiers, sailors, 
physicians, surgeons, apothecaries, painters, architects, book- 
sellers, and quack doctors, and ail the operatives of the political 
machine are marshalled in ludicrous juxta-position. A few 
honoured names, indeed, grace the multifarious list,” but: not 
more than two scientific characters are to be found. Quarterly 
Review, p. 332. 
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