1852 RECEIVES THE ROYAL MEDAL 149 



dome, and casting a curious illumination over the masses 

 of uniforms which filled the great space. The best of our 

 people were there and passed close to me, but the only 

 face that made any great impression upon my memory 

 was that of Sir Chas. Napier, the conqueror of Scinde. 

 Fancy a very large, broad -winged, and fierce-looking 

 hawk in uniform. Such an eye ! 



When the coffin and the mourners had passed I closed 

 up with the soldiers and went up under the dome, where 

 I heard the magnificent service in full perfection. 



All of it, however, was but stage trickery compared 

 with the noble simplicity of the old man's life. How the 

 old stoic, used to his iron bed and hard hair pillow, would 

 have smiled at all the pomp submitting to that, however, 

 and all other things necessary to the " carrying on of the 

 Queen's Government." 



I send Tennyson's ode by way of packing it is not 

 worth much more, the only decent passages, to my mind, 

 being those I have marked. 



The day after to-morrow I go to have my medal pre- 

 sented and to dine and make a speech. 



The Royal Medal was conferred on November 30, 

 and the medallists were entertained at the anniversary 

 dinner of the Society on that day. In the words 

 with which the President, the Earl of Rosse, accom- 

 panied the presentation of the medal, " it is not 

 difficult," writes Sir M. Foster, "reading between 

 the lines, to recognise the appreciation of a new 

 spirit of anatomical inquiry, not wholly free from a 

 timorous apprehension as to its complete validity." 1 



1 " In these papers (on the Medusae) you have for the first time 

 fully developed their structure, and laid the foundation of a 

 rational theory for their classification." "In your second paper 

 'On the Anatomy of Salpa and Pyrosoma,' the phenomena, etc., 

 have received the most ingenious and elaborate elucidation, and 



