, he cannot
enter until permission has been formally voted by the society.

When he is allowed to enter he finds the meeting-room little different
from the one he has left, except that it is provided with a sort of
throne on a raised platform at one end and with cushioned benches for
seats. On the throne, if one may so term it, sits Lord Lister, scarcely
more than his head showing above what seems to be a great velvet cushion
which surmounts his desk, at the base of which, in full view of the
society, rests the mace, fixing the eye of the "stranger," as it is
alleged to have fixed that of Cromwell aforetime, with a peculiar
fascination. On a lower plane than the president, at his right and left,
sit Sir Michael Foster and Professor Arthur William Rucker, the two
permanent secretaries. At Sir Michael's right, and one stage nearer the
audience, stands the lecturer, on the raised platform and behind the
desk which extends clear across the front of the room. As it chances,
the lecturer this afternoon is Professor Ehrlich, of Berlin and
Frankfort-on-the-Main, who has been invited to deliver the Croonian
lecture. He is speaking in German, and hence most of the fellows are
assisting their ears by following the lecture in a printed translation,
copies of which, in proof, were to be secured at the door.

The subject of the lecture is "Artificial Immunization from Disease."
It is clear that the reader is followed with interested attention, which
now and again gives rise to a subdued shuffle of applause.

The fact that the lecturer is speaking German serves perhaps to suggest
even more vividly than might otherwise occur to one the contrast between
this meeting and a meeting of the corresponding German society--the
Royal Academy of Sciences at Berlin. Each is held in an old building
of palatial cast and dimensions, of which Burlington House, here
in Piccadilly, is much the older--dating from 1664--although its
steam-heating and electric-lighting apparatus, when contrasted with the
tile stoves and candles of the other, would not suggest this. For the
rest, the rooms are not very dissimilar in general appearance, except
for the platform and throne. But there the members of the society are
shut off from the audience both by the physical barrier of the table and
by the striking effect of their appearance in full dress, while here the
fellows chiefly compose the audience, there being only a small company
of "strangers" present, and th