346 STUDY OF NATURAL PIISTORY. 



its teachers, how can it be expected that what is not 

 found in individuals should be found in learned 

 societies ? or how can it be imagined, under these 

 circumstances, that the rising school of students 

 should appreciate the value of those researches 

 which alone give dignity to the study of nature ? 



(241.) From individuals and societies let us 

 turn to national encouragement ; that we may form 

 some idea whether the governments of other nations 

 regard science and its professors in the same light 

 as they are viewed by that of Britain, and trouble 

 themselves as little in the state of one as in the 

 .patronage of the other. And here we will not 

 enter into those interesting details, brought forward 

 with so much energy and feeling by the anonymous 

 writer in the Quarterly Review, relative to the pa- 

 tronage of science in the seventeenth century, not 

 merely by the continental sovereigns of that age, 

 but by the court and ministry of Britain ; for we 

 should, by condensing, diminish the force and con- 

 clusiveness of the argument. A perusal of that 

 statement will show, that among the distinguished 

 philosophers who adorned that age, there is scarcely 

 an individual who did not receive the most sub- 

 stantial rewards for his scientific labours. Newton 

 was appointed successively Warden and Master of 

 the Mint by Charles Montague, afterwards Earl of 

 Halifax, and in the subsequent reign of Queen 

 Anne, " the then undegraded honour of knighthood" 

 was conferred upon him. Rcemer in Denmark, He- 

 velius and Huygens in France, Jacquin and Leibnitz 

 in Germany, the family of the Bernouillis, the 

 celebrated Pallas, and the illustrious Euler in 



