of Edinburgh, Session 1879 - 80 . 
319 
Hume speaks with great bitterness of the stings and “ arrows” 
which galled him so much in London, compared with the deference 
and adulation which followed him in Paris. It has been said that 
the true secret of the leaning towards arbitrary power evinced by 
his History, especially in its later revisals, was inspired by the fact 
that James the First of England spoke broad Scotch, and that the 
English were unpleasantly proud of their free constitution. But 
the uses of adversity proved salutary. The Scotsmen had their 
revenge ; for whatever may be thought of Hume’s politics, his style 
remains to this day without a rival, and the same brotherhood of 
strong men who founded this Society, achieved a triumph in the 
fields of literature which remains a lasting monument of their power. 
Such was the colour of my thoughts when I first became aware 
that I should have to-night to address you for the first time from 
this chair, and such were the lines on which, had my time permitted, 
I should have endeavoured to illustrate the literary side of your 
escutcheon. But the mere sketch which I have now outlined must 
I fear satisfy you that the task could not be performed with any- 
thing like success, without an amount of honest research to which 
my time has proved entirely inadequate. 
STATISTICAL STATEMENT. 
The following statement, in regard to the present Fellows of the 
Society, has been drawn up by the Secretary 
1. Honorary Fellows : — 
Royal Personage — 
His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, 1 
British Subjects — 
John Couch Adams, Cambridge ; Sir George Biddell 
Airy, Greenwich ; Thomas Andrews, M.D., Belfast 
(Queen’s College) ; Thomas Carlyle, London ; 
Arthur Cayley, Cambridge ; Charles Darwin, Down, 
Bromley, Kent ; John Anthony Froude, London ; 
Thomas Henry Huxley, London ; James Prescott 
Joule, Cliffpoint, Higher Broughton, Manchester ; 
William Lassell, Maidenhead ; Rev. Dr Humphrey 
Lloyd, Dublin ; William Hallowes Miller, Cam- 
bridge ; Richard Owen, London ; Thomas Romney 
Robinson, D.D., Armagh ; General Sir Edward 
Sabine, R.A., London; Henry John Stephen Smith, 
Carry forward, — — 1 
