s, who should hold those benefices, and a much greater number of
aspirants who would look to them in their turn. A yearly grant of ten
thousand pounds would endow ten such appointments of five hundred pounds
each for the elder class, and twenty-five of two hundred pounds each for
younger men; the latter eligible, of course, and preferably, but not
necessarily, to be elected to the higher benefices, as those fell
vacant, and as they should have improved themselves.

"The good proposed by this, as a political measure, is not that of
retaining such persons to act as pamphleteers and journalists, but that
of preventing them from becoming such, in hostility to the established
order of things; and of giving men of letters, as a class, something to
look for beyond the precarious gains of literature; thereby inducing in
them a desire to support the existing institutions of their country, on
the stability of which their own welfare would depend.

"Your Lordship's second question,--in what way the encouragement of
Government could most safely and beneficially be given,--is, in the
main, answered by what has been said upon the first. I do not enter into
any details of the proposed institution, for that would be to think of
fitting up a castle in the air. Nor is it worth while to examine how far
such an institution might be perverted. Abuses there would be, as in the
disposal of all preferments, civil, military, or ecclesiastical; but
there would be a more obvious check upon them; and where they occurred
they would be less injurious in their consequences than they are in the
state, the army and navy, or the church.

"With regard to prizes, methinks they are better left to schools and
colleges. Honors are worth something to scientific men, because they are
conferred upon such men in other countries; at home there are precedents
for them in Newton and Davy, and the physicians and surgeons have them.
In my judgment, men of letters are better without them, unless they are
rich enough to bequeath to their family a good estate with the bloody
hand, and sufficiently men of the world to think such distinctions
appropriate. For myself, if we had a Guelphic order, I should choose to
remain a Ghibelline.

"I have written thus fully and frankly, not dreaming that your proposal
is likely to be matured and carried into effect, but in the spirit of
good will, and as addressing one by whom there is no danger that I can
be misunderstood. _One th