EOYAL SOCIETY OP LOXDOX. 



205 



them, perhaps, members of the 

 house, who dropped in to see or 

 correct the maiden proofs of their 

 oratory in the senate. 



LORD LOUGHBOROUGH. 



Mr. Weclderburn, afterwards 

 Lord Loughborough, was once 

 asked whether he really delivered 

 in the House of Commons, a speech 

 which the newspapers ascribed to 

 him. " Why, to be sure," said he, 

 "there are many things in that 

 speech which I did say, and there 

 are more which I wish I had said." 



REPORTING FROM MEMORY. 



Mr. William Woodfall, the son 

 of the celebrated printer of the 

 Public Advertiser, in which the 

 Letters of Junius first appeared, 

 undertook, without any assistance, 

 the arduous task of reporting the 

 debates of both houses of Parlia- 

 ment, day by day, in his father's 

 paper, and afterwards in other 

 daily journals. This gentleman 

 possessed a most extraordinary 

 memory, as well as wonderful 



powers of literary labour. It is 

 asserted that he has been known 

 to sit through a long debate of the 

 House of Commons, not making a 

 single note of the proceedings, and 

 afterwards to write otit a full and 

 faithful account of what had taken 

 place, extending to sixteen columns, 

 without allowing himself an inter- 

 val of rest. The remarkable exer- 

 tions of this most famous reporter 

 gave the newspaper for which he 

 wrote a celebrity which compelled 

 other newspapers to aim at the 

 same fulness and freshness in 

 their parliamentary reports . What 

 Woodfall accomplished by exces- 

 sive bodily and mental exertion, 

 his contemporaries succeeded in 

 bringing to a higher degree of per- 

 fection by the division of labour; 

 and thus, in time, each morning 

 newspaper had secured the assist- 

 ance of an efficient body of re- 

 porters, each of whom might in 

 turn take notes of a debate, and 

 commit a portion of it to the pi-ess 

 several hours before the whole de- 

 bate was concluded. 



ROYAL SOCIETY OF LONDON, 



ITS MACE. 



The mace of the Royal Society, 

 made of silver, weighing 149 oz. 

 .avoirdupois, was presented by the 

 King, along with its second charter, 

 in 1663. Of late years it acquired 

 from another source a prestige 

 which has been dissipated in a 

 manner not unlike that of the 

 "pretorium" in ills Antiquary. It 

 was long the popular belief, Sir D. 

 Brewster mentions, in the iV. Brit. 

 Review, that this was the mace 

 ordered by Cromwell out of the 

 House of Commons, and number- 

 less visitors came to the apartments 

 of the Royal Society to see the fa- 

 mous " bauble." It was even figured 

 in the Abbotsford edition of Wood- 



stock as being the mace which be- 

 longed to the Long Parliament. 

 Mr. Weld, in his History of the 

 /loyal Society, has dispelled this 

 pleasing illusion, he having not only 

 traced the history of the "bauble" 

 mace, but discovered the warrant 

 for preparing the new one ;i 

 to the Society. " We cannot for- 

 bear observing," he says, " that 

 though the mace may not be as 

 curious as before to the antiquary, 

 divested as it now is of its fictitious 

 historical interest, yet it is much 

 more to be respected ; for surely a 

 mace designated a 'bauble,' and 

 spurned from the House of Com- 

 mons, by a republican, will scarcely 

 be an appropriate gift to the Royal 

 Society." Still, it would be a 



