zenith of a well-earned reputation, a victim to the labour by which it 

 had been achieved. 



Mr. Sutherland and Professor O'Shaughnessy, having undertaken 

 jointly the duties of the Secretaryship to the Asiatic Society, consent- 

 ed also to carry on as Proprietors, the Journal published under its spe- 

 cial patronage, and after some months' cessation of issue, it re-appeared, 

 and was continued with spirit and success. The Proprietors being 

 anxious, for private reasons, to resign the duties of our Society's Secre- 

 tariat, made over their Journal to me, when relieved from them by the 

 vote which made me their successor. 



It will thus be seen, that I became by this succession the Editor, and 

 ex-officio Proprietor, of a periodical publication, which held the anomal- 

 ous position of being at once patronised, and disowned, by the same 

 Society. Its title bespoke it the property of the scientific body whose 

 name it bore, and by whose Secretary it was edited ; the worth of 

 aught that appeared in it redounded to the credit of that Society, while 

 the pecuniary losses, and the actual real risk were borne by the ano- 

 nymous, but not less real, owner. I need not expatiate upon the perso- 

 nal inconveniences of such a position to myself. The officer of a Society 

 editing its supposed publication, is often addressed in a manner different 

 from that which would have been adopted in speaking to an indepen- 

 dent Proprietor. Contributors forgot sometimes that if I did in their 

 opinion mismanage the Journal, I was merely injuring my own proper- 

 ty, and not neglecting my duty as the servant of a Society. The im- 

 pression of the dependence of the Journal upon the Society was more- 

 over combated by no declarations on my part of my right of property. 

 I did not on the occasion of publishing the last Journal of the year, put 

 any prefatory notice to the volume, which the combined numbers would 

 form ; and I did not do so, because I felt the incongruity of throwing 

 myself too prominently forward as the Editor of a Journal of General 



