London more venerable and more
famous even than the British Museum. This, of course, is the Royal
Society, a world-famous body, whose charter dates from 1662, but whose
actual sessions began at Gresham College some twenty years earlier. One
can best gain a present-day idea of this famous institution by attending
one of its weekly meetings in Burlington House, Piccadilly--a great,
castle-like structure, which serves also as the abode of the Royal
Chemical Society and the Royal Academy of Arts. The formality of an
invitation from a fellow is required, but this is easily secured by any
scientific visitor who may desire to attend the meeting. The
programme of the meeting each week appears in that other great British
institution, the _Times_, on Tuesdays.

The weekly meeting itself is held on Thursday afternoon at half-past
four. As one enters the door leading off the great court of Burlington
House a liveried attendant motions one to the rack where great-coat
and hat may be left, and without further ceremony one steps into the
reception-room unannounced. It is a middle-sized, almost square room,
pillared and formal in itself, and almost without furniture, save for
a long temporary table on one side, over which cups of tea are being
handed out to the guests, who cluster there to receive it, and then
scatter about the room to sip it at their leisure. We had come to hear
a lecture and had expected to be ushered into an auditorium; but we had
quite forgotten that this is the hour when all England takes its tea,
the _elite_ of the scientific world, seemingly, quite as much as the
devotees of another kind of society. Indeed, had we come unawares into
this room we should never have suspected that we had about us other than
an ordinary group of cultured people gathered at a conventional
"tea," except, indeed, that suspicion might be aroused by the great
preponderance of men--there being only three or four women present--and
by the fact that here and there a guest appears in unconventional
dress--a short coat or even a velvet working-jacket. For the rest
there is the same gathering into clusters of three or four, the same
inarticulate clatter of many voices that mark the most commonplace of
gatherings.

But if one will withdraw to an inoffensive corner and take a critical
view of the assembly, he will presently discover that many of the faces
are familiar to him, although he supposed himself to be quite among
strangers. The tall f