38 MEMOIR OF 



favourite, conferred the dignity of a baronet upon 

 him, and many years after distinguished him by 

 the Order of the Bath, at that time a very rare 

 honour to a civilian, and he was subsequently 

 sworn a member of his Majesty's Privy Council. 



In the meanwhile, his situation at the Royal 

 Society was by no means an easy or an enviable 

 one. The celebrated Dr Horsley (afterwards 

 Bishop of St Asaph) headed a party who were 

 attached to the study of the abstract sciences, and 

 partly from jealousy of the attention that was paid 

 to natural history, and probably equally jealous of 

 the aristocratic members, whom it was insinuated 

 that the president had introduced to the Society 

 from no other qualification than their rank, he 

 threatened secession in the following energetic 

 speech : " If other remedies fail, we can at least 

 secede. When the hour of secession comes, the 

 president will be left, with his train of feeble 

 amateurs, and that toy upon the table, the ghost 

 of that society in which philosophy once reigned, 

 and Newton presided as her minister ." Finding 

 himself not supported in his views, he did actually 

 withdraw, with some others, and left Sir Joseph to 

 the peaceable and undisturbed possession of the 

 chair for nearly forty years. 



He now assumed that rank in the literary and 

 scientific world becoming his station, as the head 

 of so illustrious a body. His house in Soho Square 



