1887 AN ENGLISH POUR LE MERITE ly^ 



considerable time. On May 19, just before a visit to Mr. 

 F. Darwin at Cambridge, I find that he went down to St. 

 Albans for a couple of days, to walk ; and on the 27th he 

 betook himself, terribly ill and broken down, to the Saver- 

 nake Forest Hotel, in hopes of getting " screwed up." This 

 " turned out a capital speculation, a charming spick-and- 

 span little country hostelry with great trees in front." But 

 the weather was persistently bad, " the screws got looser 

 rather than tighter," and again he was compelled to stay 

 away from the x. 



A week later, however, he writes : — 



The weather has been detestable, and I got no good till 

 yesterday, which was happily fine. Ditto to-day, so I am picking 

 up, and shall return to-morrow, as, like an idiot as I am, I 

 promised to take the chair at a public meeting about a Free 

 Library for Marylebone on Tuesday evening. 



I wonder if you know this country. I find it charming. 



On the same day as that which was fixed for the meeting 

 in favour of the Free Library, he had a very interesting 

 interview with the Premier, of which he left the following 

 notes, written at the Athenaeum immediately after : — 



June 7, 1887. 



Called on Lord Salisbury by appointment at 3 p.m., and had 

 twenty minutes' talk with him about the " matter of some public 

 interest" mentioned in his letter of the (29th). 



This turned out to be a proposal for the formal recognition 

 of distinguished services in Science, Letters, and Art by the 

 institution of some sort of order analogous to the Pour le Mcrite. 

 Lord Salisbury spoke of the anomalous present mode of dis- 

 tributing honours, intimated that the Queen desired to establish 

 a better system, and asked my opinion. 



I said that I should like to separate my personal opinion from 

 that which I believed to obtain among the majority of scientific 

 men; that I thought many of the latter were much discontented 

 with the present state of affairs, and would highly approve of 

 such a proposal as Lord Salisbury shadowed forth. 



That, so far as my own personal feeling was concerned, it 

 was opposed to anything of the kind for Science. I said that in 

 Science we had two advantages — first, that a man's work is 

 demonstrably either good or bad ; and secondly, that the " con- 



