PREFACE 



THE Royal Society Club has been living and active for at 

 least a hundred and seventy-four years. It has been pre- 

 sided over by a succession of eminent men whose names 

 and work are held in honour. Its members have included 

 not only leaders in many departments of scientific investi- 

 gation and of applied science, but also representatives of 

 literature and art, of the Navy and the Army, and of every 

 branch of public life. From the beginning it has invited 

 to its table visitors from all sections of society, devoting 

 special care to the entertainment of distinguished foreigners 

 who have from time to time landed on our shores. Of its 

 meetings, its dinners and its guests it has kept ample 

 records from the very beginning until now. These docu- 

 ments, while they afford glimpses of habits and customs 

 that have passed away, throw light also on some of the 

 social relationships of not a few of the prominent men of 

 the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. 



The first attempt to put this history into writing was 

 made by Admiral William Henry Smyth, F.R.S., who in 

 the summer of the year 1858 was requested by his brother 

 Members of the Club to undertake the task. He prepared 

 a Sketch of the Rise and Progress of the Royal Society Club 

 which was printed for the Club in 1860. It forms a thin 

 quarto volume of 84 pages, with An Additional Word of 

 ten pages more, appended in the spring of the following 

 year. As its title denotes, this work was merely a sketch, 

 based almost entirely on the minutes of the Annual General 

 Meetings. But, full of the spirit of good-fellowship, it 

 gave a pleasing picture of the life of the Club. 



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