XXXVI 



Mark Roget and Charles Bell are the great authorities in the Useful Know- 

 ledge Society." 



On the 30th of November, 1^27, Dr. Roget was elected Secretary of the 

 Royal Society, on the retirement of Mr. (afterwards Sir John) Herschel. 



In company with his friend Dr. Bostock in 1828, and again with Mrs. 

 Roget in 1830, shortly after the "three days" revolution of that year, he 

 revisited Paris, with what recollections it is easy to imagine. In the former 

 year a distinguished friend of Dr. Rogers died, for whom he had a peculiar 

 veneration, namely Dr. \Yollaston, and in 1829 he lost his early adviser, 

 Dumont. In 1829 and 1830 he occupied the chair as President of the 

 Medical and Chirurgical Society, of which he had ceased to be secretary 

 three years before. In 1825 he wrote an article in the 'Parliamentary 

 Review' on " Pauper Lunatics ;" and in 1831 he contributed to the 

 'Journal of the Royal Institution of Great Britain,' vol. i.p. 311, a paper 

 K On the Geometric Properties of the Magnetic Curve, with an account of 

 an Instrument for its mechanical description." In June in the same year 

 he was elected, speciali gratia, Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, 

 and in the following May he read the 1 Gulstonian Lectures,' for which 

 he selected as his suhject " The Laws of Sensation and Perception." An 

 abstract of them, written by him, appeared in the 'London Medical Ga- 

 zette' for that month. In 1832 he furnished the articles Age and 

 Asphyxia to the ' Cyclopaedia of Practical Medicine,' published under the 

 superintendence of his friend Dr. Tweedie. Before this time, but at what 

 precise date has not been ascertained, he had written the following articles 

 in 'Rees's Cyclopaedia; viz. Sweating Sickness, Symptom, Synocha, 

 Synochvs, Tabes, and Tetanus. 



The year 1833 was one of great trial. The absorbing grief which he 

 suffered on the death of his wife made other sorrows seem light ; but 

 several family afflictions occurred at the same time, Dr. Roget sought to 

 divert his mind in the society of his scientific friends, and in the interest he 

 could still take in scientific pursuits. He attended the Meeting at Cam- 

 bridge of the British Association, which had been founded two years be- 

 fore at York. These gatherings were always a source of great delight and 

 interest to him, and he was a frequent attendant at them for the next thirty 

 Years. At one or more of the earlier Meetings he filled the chair of the 

 Phvsiological Section. 



Fortunately also he was at this time engaged in au undertaking with 

 which his memory will ever be associated, namely, the production of one of 

 the 4 Bridgewater Treatises.' The most important department of that cele- 

 brated series, executed under the will of the Earl of Bridgewater, to illus- 

 trate " the Power, "Wisdom, and Goodness of God, as manifested in the 

 Creation," had been assigned to Dr. Roget by the late President of the 

 Royal Society, Mr. Davies Gilbert, to whom the selection was ex officio in- 

 trusted. His treatise, which forms the fifth of the series and is in two 



