412 STUDY OF NATURAL HISTORY. 



losophers to the honour of knighthood, and the 

 bestowal of a small pension upon another.* At a 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. 



