f, after a discovery is once made and published, every
subsequent new process in the same art is to be nationally rewarded,
the income-tax must be at least quadrupled. The complaint, however,
against the Royal Society, is not altogether groundless. True it is
that the first paper of Mr Talbot did not contain an account of the
processes employed by him, and therefore should not have been even
read to the Society; but the paper on the Calotype did contain such
description, and we see no reason why a society for the advancement of
knowledge should not give publicity to a valuable process, though made
the subject of a patent--but it certainly should not bestow an
honorary reward upon an inventor who has withheld from the Royal
Society and the public the practice of the invention whose processes
he communicates. Mr Talbot had a perfect right to patent his
invention, but has on that account no claim in respect of the same
invention to an honorary reward. The Royal Society did not publish his
paper, but awarded him a medal. In our opinion, they should have
published his paper and not awarded him a medal.

Regarded as to her national encouragement of science, there are some
features in which England differs not from other countries; there are
others in which she may be strikingly contrasted with them; and, with
all our love for her, we fear she will suffer by the contrast. A
learned writer of the present day, has the following passage in
reference to the state of science in England as contrasted with other
countries:--"When the proud science of England pines in obscurity,
blighted by the absence of the royal favour and the nation's sympathy;
when her chivalry fall unwept and unhonoured, how can it sustain the
conflict against the honoured and marshalled genius of foreign
lands?"[25]

[25] Brewster's Life of Newton, p. 35.

This, to be sure, is somewhat "_tumultuous_." We do not, however, cite
it as a specimen of composition, but as an expression of a very
prevalent feeling; the opinion involved in the concluding _quaere_ is
open to doubt--England does sustain the conflict, if any conflict
there be to sustain; but we are bound to admit, that in no country are
the soldiers of _science militant_ less honoured or rewarded. It is no
uncommon remark, that despotic governments are the most favourable to
the cultivation of the arts and sciences. There is, perhaps, a general
truth in this, and the causes are not difficult of reco