88 Presidentship of the Earl of Morton 1764 



so that his dwindling resources were further mulcted in 

 I2s. Hence at the next meeting he was compelled to send 

 the hat round once more, and the Club then ordered that 

 55. be collected from each member. 



The guests of the Club this year included some notable 

 men. In the month of March two foreigners of very different 

 characteristics appeared at its table. Louis Marie Joseph 

 d' Albert d'Ailly, Due de Picquigny (afterwards Due de 

 Chaulnes), a young French nobleman, had come to London, 

 but slanderous tongues had apparently preceded him, for 

 Horace Walpole, always on the outlook for social gossip, 

 describes the alarm of a lady who saw this duke enter her 

 assembly, and how she forbade her daughter to speak to 

 " such a debauched young man." He was then 23 years 

 of age and in the army, which he soon quitted in order to 

 devote himself to scientific studies. The Royal Society 

 elected him into their body on the i5th of this month 

 and the Royal Philosophers entertained him twice at dinner. 

 Further reference to his honourable and useful career will 

 be found again in the record of the Club for 1783. 



The other foreign guest was Claud Adrian Helve tius, the 

 famous philosopher whose work De VEsprit, published in 

 1758, had created so much sensation as to be translated into 

 most European languages. In France it aroused such wide- 

 spread opposition that it was ordered by the Parliament 

 of Paris to be publicly burnt. The advent of this friend 

 of Voltaire to London was thus chronicled by Horace Wal- 

 pole : " Helvetius, whose book has drawn such persecution 

 on him, and the persecution such fame, is coming to settle 

 here, and brings two Miss Helvetiuses, with fifty thousand 

 pounds apiece, to bestow on two immaculate members of 

 our most august and incorruptible senate, if he can find 

 two in this virtuous age who will condescend to accept his 

 money." 1 The persecuted French philosopher arrived in 

 London, as Walpole duly records, on I2th March 1764. He 

 probably called at the rooms of the Royal Society a few 

 days thereafter, for he was invited to the Club dinner on the 



1 To Sir Horace Mann, lyth October 1763. 



