1793 Lieut.-General Komazewski; Lord Sheffield 197 



this occasion, for there were no candidates on the list and 

 the three vacancies stood over unfilled for another year. 



Among the foreign visitors the most eminent was Professor 

 Blumenbach, who dined seven times in the first three months 

 of the year. Professor Seyffer, Signer Selvaggi, the Abbe 

 Mann, and Lieut.-General Komazewski were also enter- 

 tained. The last-named guest was a Pole who had dis- 

 tinguished himself by his skill in deciphering the codes 

 of secret despatches. King Stanislaus Augustus had made 

 him Lieutenant-General and had also chosen him as his 

 own aide-de-camp, employing him on several diplomatic 

 missions. He remained for some time in this country, for 

 he dined at the Club three times between the beginning of 

 February and the end of March, twice in May, and once 

 again in October. It was an anxious time for the Poles 

 between the peace of Jassy, which followed the defeat of 

 the Turks by the Russians, and the second partition of Poland. 

 And Komazewski was not improbably engaged in trying 

 to obtain some support for his country. 



The only English guest this year about whom a few 

 words may be said here was Lord Sheffield. As John Baker 

 Holroyd he had raised and commanded a dragoon regiment, 

 devoted attention to commerce and agriculture, purchased 

 the estate of Sheffield Place in Sussex and entered Parlia- 

 ment in 1780. He was raised to the Irish peerage in 1781, 

 and thereafter to the British peerage with the title of Baron 

 Sheffield of Sheffield. He is chiefly remembered as the 

 most intimate and devoted friend of Edward Gibbon, whom 

 he met first at Lausanne in 1764. 



1793. The Anniversary in 1793 took place so early as the 

 27th June, when Sir Joseph Banks presided over a company 

 of nineteen members. The Treasurer announced that the 

 disbursements on account of tavern-bills since last mid- 

 summer amounted to 41 155. 3d., leaving in his hands a 

 balance of 26 i6s. 8d. The annual subscription was then 

 fixed at one guinea. Two vacancies were reported, occa- 

 sioned by the death of Robert Banks Hodgkinson and John 

 Smeaton. There were now five vacancies to be filled. As 



