wealth, or title, or eminence, or power. The lowly inquirer 

 into nature, in this country, at least, cannot expect for his 

 portion any share of the prizes, the ad\a Kei/meva ev /xeaco, 

 almost exclusively the meed of political success. The 

 " esuriens Pisase ramus olivse" is all that at the most he can 

 hope for. To supply those incentives to exertion, to honour 

 those who are honoured nowhere else, is their legitimate 

 province. To encourage, by the countenance of numbers, 

 and by the sympathies of genius, and by the approbation of 

 the wise, and of the great, and of the good, is their appro- 

 priate mission. For them it is to exhibit to modest genius 

 and retiring merit, ever prone to undervalue itself, the 

 standards of the age, so that it faint not, by striving to reach 

 some ideal perfection, some standard unattainable ; and com- 

 paring what they themselves have done, with what has been 

 done by others, haply of great name and high renown, these 

 humble sons of genius may be thus conscious of excellence, 

 and realise in themselves the feelings of Correggio, when 

 he exclaimed, on beholding a painting of Raphael, 



' Ancb' io sono pittore,' 



" And I too am a painter." 



" Nor are those Meetings, or gatherings together, or asso- 

 ciations, or whatever other name you may choose to give 

 them, of recent growth or of modern invention. We find 

 them coeval almost with the civilization of man himself. 

 The games which held so important a place in the policy 

 af ancient Greece, were not alone displays of gymnastic or 

 equestrian excellence ; they were more, they were annual 

 congresses, itinerant assemblages, of the most learned, the 

 most ingenious, and the most philosophical of a nation, in 

 intellectual excellence, in artistic genius hitherto unmatched 

 among men ? Is it not known to every school boy, that a 

 history, the model on which all history should be written, 

 that KTrifiais dec, as it has been truly styled by its author, 



