106 Presidentship of James West 1769 



the Club, the Due de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, was nearly 

 four years younger. Horace Walpole, who met him in Lon- 

 don, wrote of him to Sir Horace Mann : " Do you know this 

 young Duke. He is very aimiable and worthy much more 

 worthy than his ancestor." His main object in the visit 

 to England was to enquire into English agricultural methods. 

 On his return to France -he founded a model farm, also an 

 educational institution for the children of poor soldiers. 

 He led an active and distinguished career through the stormy 

 times of the Revolution. Loyal to the King, he was for a 

 time trusted by the popular party. When the monarchy 

 was doomed he received a hint to make his escape from 

 France. He crossed to England in a fishing-boat, and was 

 welcomed by Arthur Young, but went on to the United 

 States. In 1799 he returned to France and lived for a 

 while in strict retirement. When he revisited his estates 

 he found all his undertakings as he had left them, the 

 various authorities that sprang out of the Revolution 

 having preserved them though they proscribed him. He 

 resumed his philanthropic works, and took his place eventu- 

 ally as a peer of France. He died on 23rd March 1827, 

 at the age of eighty, universally respected and esteemed. 



Perhaps the most interesting of the home guests of 

 the Club this year was James Burnett, one of the judges of 

 the Scottish Court of Session, commonly known as Lord 

 Monboddo, a courtesy title derived from his estate of that 

 name in Kincardineshire. Educated first at the Univer- 

 sities of Aberdeen and Edinburgh, he had, like so many 

 of his contemporaries in Scotland, completed his training 

 at a Dutch seat of learning. Walter Scott described him 

 as " a devout believer in the virtues of the heroic ages, and 

 the deterioration of civilised mankind ; a great condemner 

 of luxuries, insomuch that he never used a wheeled carriage/' 

 He published a treatise on the Origin of Language and 

 another on Ancient Metaphysics, but he is perhaps best 

 remembered for his belief that the earliest men had tails 

 which were by degrees worn off by the habit of sitting. 

 Four years later than this dinner he received Samuel 



