y Science had its Society, and if they published everything,
withholding their best papers [i.e., from the Royal Society], which they
would not be likely to do, still there would remain to the Royal Society
...." Lord Rosse seems to imagine that the minor Societies themselves
transfer their best papers to the Royal Society; that if, for instance, the
Astronomical Society were to receive from A.B. a paper of unusual merit,
the Society would transfer it to the Royal Society. This is quite wrong:
any preference of the Royal to another Society is the work of the
contributor himself. But it shows how well hafted is the Royal Society's
claim, that a President should acquire the notion that it is acknowledged
and acted upon by the other Societies, in their joint and corporate
capacities. To the pretension thus made I never could give any sympathy.
When I first heard Mr. Christie, Sec. R. S., set it forth at the
anniversary dinner of the Astronomical Society, I remembered the Baron in
Walter Scott:

"Of Gilbert the Galliard a heriot he sought,
Saying, Give thy best steed as a vassal ought."

And I remembered the answer:

"Lord and Earl though thou be, I trow
I can rein Buck's-foot better than thou."

Fully conceding that the Royal Society is entitled to preeminent rank and
all the respect due to age and services, I could not, nor can I now, see
any more obligation in a contributor to send his best to that Society than
he can make out to be due to himself. This pretension, in my mind, was
hooked on, by my historical mode of viewing things already mentioned, to my
knowledge of the fact that the Royal {28} Society--the chief fault,
perhaps, lying with its President, Sir Joseph Banks--had sternly set itself
against the formation of other societies; the Geological and Astronomical,
for instance, though it must be added that the chief rebels came out of the
Society itself. And so a certain not very defined dislike was generated in
my mind--an anti-aristocratic affair--to the body which seemed to me a
little too uplifted. This would, I daresay, have worn off; but a more
formidable objection arose. My views of physical science gradually arranged
themselves into a form which would have rendered F.R.S., as attached to my
name, a false representation symbol. The Royal Society is the great
fortress of general physics: and in the philosophy of our day, as to
general physics, there is something which makes the banner of the R.S. one