vapouring self-conceit, have given me serious pause, fell out thus oddly: it is not often that Fate knocks at one's door with so seemingly ludicrous a summons.

A WOMAN'S THOUGHTS ABOUT WOMEN.

FEMALE SERVANTS.

THOUGH female servants come under the category of handicraftswomen, yet they form a distinct class, very important in itself, and essential to the welfare of the community.

A faithful servant-next best blessing, and next rarest, after a faithful friend!-who among us has not had, or wanted, such a one? Some inestimable follower of the family, who has known all the family changes, sorrows, and joys, is always at hand to look after the petty necessities and indescribably small nothings which, in the aggregate, make up the sum of one's daily comfort; whom one can trust in sight and out of sight-call upon for help in season and out of season; rely on in absence, or sickness, or trouble, to 'keep the house going,' safe and right; and at all times, and under all circumstances, depend upon for that conscientious fidelity of service which money can never purchase, nor repay.

And this, what domestic servants ought to be, might be, they are-alas, how seldom!

Looking round on the various households we know, I fear we shall find that this relation of master (or mistress) and servant-a relation so necessary, as to have been instituted from the foundation of the world, and since so hallowed by both biblical and secular chronicles, as to be, next to ties of blood and friendship, the most sacred bond that can exist between man and man-is, on the whole, the worst fulfilled of any under the sun.

Whose fault is this?-the superior's, who, in the march of intellect and education around him, losing I somewhat the distinction of mere rank, yet tries to enforce it by instituting external distinctions impossible to be maintained between himself and his dependents?-or the inferior's, who, sufficiently advanced to detect the weaknesses of the class above him, though not to cure his own, abjures the blind reverence and obedience of ancient times, without attaining to the higher spirit of this our day-when the law of servitude has been remodelled, elevated, and consecrated by Christianity itself, in the person of its Divine Founder. He that is greatest among you, let him be your

servant.'

to get them to carry that truth out practically-to own that they and their servants are of like passions and feelings, capable of equal elevation or deterioration of character, and amenable to the same moral laws-in fact, all 'sisters' together, accountable both to themselves and to the opposite sex for the influence they mutually exercise over one another, would, I fear, be held simply ridiculous. 'Sisters' indeed! Certainly not, under any circumstances-except when Death, the great Leveller, having permanently interposed, we may safely, over a few spadefuls of earth, venture to acknowledge 'our dear sister here departed.'

I have gone up and down the world a good deal, yet I have scarcely found one household, rich or poor, hard or benevolent, Christian or worldly, aristocratic or democratic, which, however good in outward practice, could be brought to own as a guiding principle, this, which is apparently the New Testament principle with regard to service and servants.

I neither seek to preach nor act equality; of all shams, there is none so vain as the assertion of that which does not, and cannot exist in this world, and which the highest religious and social legislation never supposes possible.

For instance, my cook prepares and sends up dinner. From long practice, she does it a hundred times better than I could do; nay, even takes a pleasure and pride in it, for which I am truly thankful, and sincerely indebted to her too; for a good cook is a household blessing, and no small contributor to health, temper, and enjoyment. Accordingly, I treat her with consideration, and even enter her domains with a certain respectful awe. But I do not invite her to eat her own dinner, or mingle in the society which to me is its most piquant sauce. She was not born to it, nor brought up for it. Good old soul! she would gape at the finest bon-mot, and doze over the most intellectual conversation. She is better left in peace by her kitchen-fire.

Also, though it is a real pleasure to me to watch my neat parlour-maid in and out of the drawing-room, to see by her bright intelligent face that she understands much of whatever talk is going on, and may learn something by it too sometimes; still, I should never think of asking her to take a seat among the guests. Poor little lass! she would be as unhappy and out of place here, as I should be in the noisy Christmas party below stairs, of which she is the very centre of attraction, getting more compliments and misletoe-kisses than I ever got, or wished for, in my whole lifetime. And, by the same rule, though I like to see her prettily dressed, and never scruple to tell her when she sets my teeth on edge by a blue bow on a green-cotton gown, I do not hold it necessary, when she helps me on with my silk one, to condole with her over the said cotton, or to offer her the use of my toilet and my chaperonage at the conversazione to which I am going, where, in the scores I meet, there may be scarcely any face more pleasant, more kindly, or more necessary to me than her own.

Nevertheless, each is in her station. Providence fixed both where they are; and while they there remain, and, unless either individual is qualified to change, neither has the smallest right to overstep the barrier between them-recognised, perhaps, better tacitly than openly by either-but never by any ridiculous assumption of equality denied or set aside. Yet one meeting-point there is-far below, or above, all external barriers-the common womanhood in which all share. If anything were to happen to my little maid-if I caught her crying over 'father's' letter, or running in, laughing and rosy, after shutting the back gate on-somebody-I am afraid my heart would warm to her just as much as, though I never left my name at Buckingham Palace, it is prone to do to a certain Lady there, who takes early walks,

and goes rides with her little children-apparently a better woman, wife, and mother than nine-tenths of her subjects. Yes; it is here, I think, the only true equality lies-in this recognition of a common nature; to the divinely appointed law of which all external practice is to be referred. Would that both mistresses and servants could be brought to recognise this equality-not as a mere sentimental theory, but as a tangible fact, the foundation and starting-point of all relations between them.

It concerns maids just as much as mistresses; and to them I wish to speak, more especially as among them this Journal circulates largely-at least, I have often found it, hid in table-drawers, and 'streeling' about dressers, or pored over of odd evenings when the kitchen was tidy and work was done. All the better: no mental improvement that is compatible with the duties of his or her calling, ought to be forbidden any human being. I should like, first, to impress upon all womenservants how very much society depends upon them for its wellbeing, physical and moral. I am not afraid of thereby increasing their self-conceit: it is not responsibility, but the want or loss of it, which degrades character. To feel that you can be something, or might be, is often the first step towards becoming it; and I hold it safest, on the whole, to treat people as better than they are, if, perchance, conscience may shame them into being what they are believed, than to check all hope, paralyse all aspiration, and irritate them, by the slow pressure of contemptuous incredulity, into becoming actually as bad as they are supposed to be. Thus, if the young women to whom has fallen the lot of domestic service, of making homes comfortable, and especially of taking care of children, could once be made to feel their own importance as a class their infinite means of usefulness-I think it would stimulate them into a far higher feeling of self-respect and true respectability, and make them of double value to the community at large.

What do you go to service' for?-wages of course: all you care for is how much money you can earn, and how easy a place you get for it. Character is likewise indispensable to you; so you seek out good families, and keep in them for a certain length of time. Meanwhile, the most energetic and sensible among you try to learn as much as lies in your way-but only as a means of bettering yourselves. "To better yourself' is usually held a satisfactory reason for quitting the most satisfactory place and the kindest of mistresses.

On the whole, the bond between you and 'missis' is a mere bargain-a matter of pounds, shillings, and pence; you do just as much as she exacts, or as you consider your wages justify her in expecting from you -not a particle more. As to rights, privileges, and perquisites, it is not unfrequently either a daily battle or a sort of armed treaty between kitchen and parlour. The latter takes no interest in the former, except to see that you do your work and keep your place; while you on your part, except for gossip or curiosity, are comfortably indifferent to the family.' You leave or stay just as it suits them, or yourself, get through a prescribed round of work, are tolerably well-behaved, civil, honest-at least in great matters-and tell no lies, or only as many white ones as will answer your purposes. And so you go on, passing from 'place' to 'place,' resting nowhere, responsible nowhere; sometimes marrying, and dropping into a totally different sphere, but oftener still continuing in the same course from year to year, laying by little enough, either in wages or attachment; yet doing very well, in your own sense, till sickness or old age overtakes you, and then-where are you?

I have read somewhere that in our hospitals and lunatic asylums there is, next to governesses, no class so numerous as that of female domestic servants.

Remember, I am referring not to the lower degrees, but to the respectable among you-those who can always command decent wages and good situations, so long as they are capable of taking them. Of the meaner class, ignorant, stupid, drifted from household to household, from pure incapacity to do or to learn anything, or expelled disgracefully thence for want of (poor wretches, were they ever taught?) a sense of the common moral necessities of society, which objects to the open breach of at least the sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth commandments-of these unhappy dregs of your sisterhood, I cannot now venture to speak. I speak of those, born of respectable parents, starting in service with good prospects, able, generally, to read and write, and gifted with sufficient education and intelligence to make them a blessing to themselves and all about them, if their intelligence were not so often degraded into mere sharpness,' for want of that quality-rare in all classes, but rarest in yoursmoral conscientiousness.

·

Why is it that, especially in large towns, a 'clever' servant is almost sure to turn out badly? Why do mistresses complain that, while one can get a decent servant, a good-natured servant, a servant who 'does her work pretty well, with plenty of looking after,' a conscientious servant is with difficulty, if at all, to be found?

By conscientious, I mean one who does her dutythat is, the general business of her calling-not merely for wages or a character, or even for the higher motive of 'pleasing missis,' but for the highest of all motives-because it is her duty. Because, to cook a dinner, with care and without waste; to keep a house clean and orderly in every corner, seen or not seen; to be scrupulously honest and truthful, in the smallest as in the greatest things; to abstain from pert answers in the parlour, squabbles in the kitchen, and illnatured tittle-tattle about her fellow-servants or the family-concern not merely her position as a servant, but her conduct and character as a human being, accountable to God as much as the greatest woman that ever was born.

'Oh, that's fine talking!' you may say; 'but what can I do? what can be expected of me-only a poor servant?'

Only a poor servant! Only a person whom a whole household is obliged to trust, more or less, with its comfort, order, property, respectability, peace, health -I was going to add life; who, in times of sickness or trouble, knows more of its secrets than nearest acquaintance; who is aware of all its domestic weaknesses, faults, and vexations; to whom the 'skeleton' said to be in every house must necessarily be a thing guessed at, if not only too familiar; on whom master, mistress, children, and friend must be daily dependent for numerous small comforts and attentions, scarcely known, perhaps, until they are missed. Only a poor servant! Why, no living creature has more opportunity of doing good or evil, and becoming to others either a blessing or a curse, than a 'poor servant!'

Not if she is a mere bird of passage, flitting from roof to roof, indifferent to everything save what she may pick up to feather her nest with by the way. Not if she starts with the notion that 'missis' and she are to be always at war, or on the alert against mutual encroachments, anxious only which can get the most out of the other. Not if she takes to fawning and flattering, humouring her mistress's weak points, and laughing at her behind her back, betraying the follies or misfortunes of one household into another; carrying on a regular system of double-faced hypocrisy, and fancying she is getting her revenge, and degrading her injurers, when, in fact, she more, much more, degrades herself.

These are the things which make servants despised; not because they are servants, but because the most

of them, if they assume any moral standard at all, hold one so far below that of the class above them, that this class learns to regard and treat them as an inferior order of beings.

What can you expect from a servant ?' said to me a lady with whom I often used to argue the matter a good and noble-minded woman, too, among whose few prejudices was this, fixed and immutable, against the whole race of domestics.

What do I expect from a servant? Why, precisely what I exact from myself-the same honesty of word and act, the same chastity and decency of behaviour, self-government in temper and speech, and propriety of dress and manner according to our respective stations.

Therefore, in any disputed point, I, as being probably the more educated, older, if not wiser of the two, feel bound as much as possible to put myself in her place, to try and understand her feelings and character, before I judge her, or legislate for her. I try in all things to set her an example to follow, rather than abuse her for faults and failings, which she has sense enough to see I am just as liable to as she. I would rather help her in the right way, than drive her into it, whip in hand, and take another road myself. Reprove, I ought, and will, as often as she requires it; but reproof is one thing, scolding another: she should never see that I find fault merely from bad temper, or for the pleasure (?) of scolding. Authority I must have: it is for her good as well as mine that there should be only one mistress in the house, to whom obedience must be implicitly rendered, and whose domestic regulations will admit of no idleness, carelessness, or irregularity; but I would scorn to use my authority unjustly, or wantonly, or unkindly, simply for the sake of asserting it. If it is worth anything in itself, she will soon learn that it is not to be disputed.

And generally, rule, order, and even fair reproof, are among the last things that servants complain of. Selfishness, stinginess, want of consideration for others, are much oftener the fruitful source of all kinds of domestic rebellion, or the distrust which is worse than any open fight-the sense of gnawing injustice which destroys all respect and attachment between 'upstairs' and 'downstairs.'

And yet the servant is often very unjust too. Cook, who has only to dress the dinner, and neither to work for it nor pay for it, turns up her nose at missis's 'meanness' and displeasure at waste or extravagance -cook, who, if any crash came, has only to look out for another place; while missis has her five children, whose little mouths must be filled, and little bodies must be clothed, and 'master,' whom it breaks her heart to see coming in from the City, haggard, tired, and cross-a crossness he cannot help, poor man!-or sitting down with a pitiful patience, sick and sad, almost wishing, save for her and the children, that he could lay his head on her shoulder and die! What does cook in the kitchen, fat and comfortable, know of all these things-of the agonised struggle for position and character-nay, mere bread-which makes the days and nights of thousands of the professional classes one long battle for life?

Also, the pretty housemaid, who has her regular work and periodical holiday, with her young man' coming faithfully on Sundays, about whom, should he turn out false, she rarely makes a fuss, but quickly takes up with another; she being essentially practical, and mental suffering being happily out of her line. Little she guesses of all the conflicts, torments, and endurances which fall to the lot of natures whom a different cultivation, if not a finer organisation, has rendered more alive to another sort of trouble-that anguish of spirit which is worse than any bodily pain. Little she knows, when she comes in singing to dust

the parlour, of many a cruel scene transacted there; or of many an hour of mortal agony, bitter as death, yet sharpened by the full consciousness of youth and life, spent in the pretty room, outside which she grumbles so, because 'miss will keep her door locked, and it'll be dinner-time afore ever a body can get the beds made!'

Servants should make allowance for these things, and many more which they neither know nor understand. They should respect, not out of blind subservience, but mere common sense, the great difference which their narrower education and mode of thought often places between them and the family,' in its pleasures, tastes, and necessities, and, above all, in its sufferings. This difference must exist: in the happiest homes, cares and anxieties must be for ever arising. like sea-waves, to be breasted or avoided, or dashed against and broken, as may be; and against these the servant must bear her part as well as the mistress. But it is, and ought to be, something to know how often a word or look of respectful sympathy, a quiet little attention, an unofficious observance of one's comfort in trifles, will, in times of trouble, go direct to the mistress's heart, with a soothing influence of which the servant has not the slightest idea, and which is never afterwards forgotten. 'Better is a friend that is near than a brother afar off;' and better, many a time, is the silent kindness of some domestic, who, from long familiarity, understands one's peculiarities, than the sympathy of many an outside friend, who only rubs against one's angles, sharpened by sickness or pain, and often, unintentionally, hurts more by futile comforting than by total neglect.

A word on one branch of female service, undeniably the most important of all-the care and management of children.

I have always, from fond experience, held that child to be the happiest who never had a nursery-maidonly a mother. But this lot is too felicitous to fall to many, and perhaps, after all, would not be in reality so Utopian as in idea-particularly to the mothers. So let us grant hired nurses to be a natural necessity of civilisation.

Poor things-they certainly need consideration, for they have much to bear. Children are charming-in the abstract; but one sometimes sees the petted cherubs of the drawing-room the little fiends of the nursery, exhibiting, almost before they can speak, passions which would tempt one to believe in original sin, did not education commence with existence. And, whatever the mysterious law of sin may be that Adam made us liable for, it is possible to bring even infants under the dominion of that law of love-given by the Second Adam-to Whom little children came. And how? By practising it ourselves.

Ay; making allowance for the necessary shortcomings of all young things, just entered on the experience of life, from kittens to boys, the former being much the least troublesome of the two, I never once knew or heard of a case of irredeemably 'naughty' children, in regard to whom parents or nurses, or both, were not originally and principally to blame. I never saw a fretful, sullen girl, who had not been made so by selfishness and ill-humour on the part of others, or by tantalising restrictions and compelled submission, hard enough at any age, but especially in childhood; or a passionate, revengeful boy, who had not first had the Cain-like spirit put into him by some taunting voice or uplifted hand

not a baby-hand; teaching him that what others did he might do, and that the blow he smarted from was exactly the same sort of pain, and dealt in the same spirit, as that he delighted to inflict on nurse or brother, feeling out of his fierce little heart that this was the sole consolation left him for his half-understood but intolerable wrongs.

Does ever any man or woman remember the feeling of being 'whipped'-as a child-the fierce anger, the insupportable ignominy, the longing for revenge, which blotted out all thought of contrition for the fault in rebellion against the punishment? With this recollection on their own parts, I can hardly suppose any parents venturing to inflict it-certainly not allowing its infliction by another under any circumstances whatever. A nurse-maid or domestic of any sort, once discovered to have lifted up her hand against a child, ought to meet instant severe rebuke, and, on a repetition of the offence, instant dismissal.

A firm will the nurse must have-which the child will obey, knowing it must be obeyed; but it should be with her no less than with the parents, a loving will always. I will not suppose any young woman so mean and cowardly as to wreak her whims and tempers, or those of her mistress, on the helpless little sinner, who, however annoying, is after all such a very small sinner. I cannot believe she will find it so very hard to love the said sinner, who clings about her helplessly night and day, in the total dependence that of itself produces love. And surely, remembering her own childhood and its events-such nothings now, of such vast moment then, its unjust punishments, unremedied wrongs, and harshly exacted sacrificesthings which in their results may have affected her temper for years, and even yet are unforgotten-she will strive as much as possible to put herself in her nursling's place, to look at the world from his point of view, and never, as people often do, to expect from him a degree of perfection which one rarely finds even in a grown person; above all, never to expect from him anything that she does not practise herself.

It will be seen that I hold this law of kindness as the Alpha and Omega of education. I once asked one-in his own house a father in everything but the name, his authority unquestioned, his least word held in reverence, his smallest wish obeyed-'How did you ever manage to bring up these children?' He said: 'By love.' That is the question. It is because people have so little love in them, so little purity and truth, selfcontrol and self-denial, that they make such frightful errors in the bringing up of children. When I go from home to home of the middle classes, and see the sort of rule or misrule there, the countless evil influences, physical and spiritual, against which children have to struggle, I declare I often wonder that in the rising generation there are half-a-dozen good men and women. And when I glance down the Times column of 'Want Places,' and speculate how few of these 'nurses,' upper and under girls,' and 'nursery-maids,' have the smallest knowledge of their responsibility, or care about fulfilling it, my wonder is that the new generation should grow up to manhood and womanhood at all.

tomed to this law of love-love paramount and never ceasing, clearly discernible in the midst of restraint, reproof, and even punishment-love that tries to be always as just as it is tender, and never exercises one of its rights for its own pleasure and good, but for the child's. To the nurse, unto whom it does not come by instinct, as it does to parents, the practice of it may be difficult-very difficult-but God forbid it should be impossible.

And what a reward there is in this, beyond any form of service-to a woman. Respect and gratitude of parents; consideration from all in the house; affection, fresh, full, and free, and sweet as only a child's love can be. Trying as the nurse-maid's life is, countless as are her vexations and pains, how many a childless wife or solitary old-maid has envied her, playing at romps for kisses, deafened with ever-sounding rills of delicious laughter all day, and lying down at night with a soft sleepy thing breathing at her side, or wakened of a morning with two little arms tight round her neck, smotheringly expressing a wealth of love that kingdoms could not buy.

And when she grows an old woman, if, as often happens to domestic servants, she does not marry, but remains in service all her life, it must be her own fault if nurse's position is not an exceedingly happy and honoured one. Not perhaps, in our modern times, after the fashion of her order in novels and plays-from Juliet's nurse downwards-but still abounding in comfort and respect. Most likely, she still lives in the family-anyhow, it will be strange if her grown-up children' do not now and then come and see her, to gossip over those old times which, the further we leave them behind, grow the more precious. In time these children's children-with their other parent, who knew not nurse, and whom nurse still views with rather suspicious curiosity-come and chatter to her, eager to hear all about 'pa' or 'ma;' how 'ma' looked when she was a little baby; whether 'pa' was a good boy or a naughty boy, some thirty odd years ago. And—a remarkable moral fact!-the chances are that 'pa' will gravely confess to the latter; while old nurse, seeing all things through the softening glass of time, will protest that neither he nor any of the children ever gave her the least trouble since they were born!

I have said a good deal, and yet it seems as if I had almost left the subject where I found it, it is so wide. Let me end it in words, which, coming into my mind now, transcend all mine, and yet, I trust, have been made the foundation of them, in which case I need not fear. Words, open alike to master and servantstudied by how few, yet in which lies the only law of life for all:

'Servants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh; not with eye-service, as men-pleasers; but in singleness of heart, fearing God: And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men; knowing that of the Lord ye shall receive the REWARD.'

BURLINGTON HOUSE-THE NEW HOME

whose names stand foremost in the scientific annals of the present century. Heavy Sir Joseph Banks, carried in a chair by four strong men to preside at meetings of the Society; Davy, flushed with pride at having been elected to succeed the heavy baronet as president; Wollaston, among distinguished men perhaps the cleverest; and Herschel, Faraday, and many others living and dead. That memorable door no longer opens to science; she has migrated with her votaries a mile further away from the city.

Some persons have thought that the Society was too highly favoured by a grant of free quarters in the palatial edifice. But though the rooms were free, the windows were not, and window-tax was always exacted and paid. Moreover, the Society have always been the scientific advisers of the government: whenever an opinion has been asked, committees have been appointed, who spared no pains to make their reply worthy of the Society's reputation, and thereby of the nation's-drawing up reports or giving the very best advice gratuitously. At present, besides giving gratuitous opinions, the Society undertake the administration of L.1000 voted by parliament every year for the promotion of science.

The impulse given of late towards improvements in the civil service, and an outcry for more room from the registrar-general, the Inland Revenue, and some other departments, set the authorities thinking that it would be desirable to take possession of all the rooms occupied by scientific societies in Somerset House, and convert them into offices. The Royal Society had long been straitened for room for their increasing library; hence, when my lords of the Treasury offered more spacious quarters in Burlington House, the offer was, after due consideration, accepted. Three other societies refused the offer, and are now 'sorry for it.' We have, however, heard a rumour that the house will be wanted some day for Prince Alfred: if it be true, the societies will have to undergo another removal.

We may here take the opportunity of correcting a misapprehension that prevails in some quarters-even in the House of Commons-as to the case of the scientific societies and the government. The Royal Society, from their origin in the reign of Charles II., have always been self-supporting: government has never done more for them than to find house-room, and that only since 1780. The Society have neither been fostered nor enfeebled by votes of money from the public purse for their own uses; they have always paid their way like honest savans, which is one of the reasons why the significant F.R.S. has become the first scientific distinction in the world. Of the annual grant of L.1000, which was first voted seven years ago, when Lord John Russell was minister, not one penny has been applied by the Society to their own purposes. They act but as stewards of the sums, apportioning them in such ways as will best advance the ends of science-helping earnest inquirers whose circumstances are inadequate to the cost of experiments; at times, printing valuable observations, which, but for this aid, would have remained unpublished.

But to come to the subject expressed in the title of the present paper. If you have ever sauntered westward along Piccadilly, you will not have failed to notice a high sullen wall abutting on that pretentious lounge-Burlington Arcade. It is relieved by three gateways-two for show, one for use-which, up to within the past three years, were opened as seldom as a miser's strong box. But times have changed; the middle gate now stands open-that is, from ten to four on six days of the week-the three acres behind the wall, and the buildings thereupon, have become public property, and the public, taking advantage of the open gate, step in from time to time to see what has been bought with their money.

On entering, you see a spacious court-yard, not very well paved; at one end, a mansion built of stone, with two wings; at the other, a crescent-formed colonnade, cut in two by the main gateway. The principal front has a rustic basement, projecting ends, pilastered columns in the centre, all finished above by an entablature and balustrade. As for the wings, they are about as picturesque as bits of Gower Street would be planted on the same spot; and if you are perfectly sane on matters of art, you will not find cause for any very rapturous emotion, look to whatever side of the court-yard you may.

The east wing is occupied by the London University; the west wing-formerly the kitchen-has been converted into a hall of noble proportions, in which the Royal Society hold their evening meetings, and the university their examinations and annual gatherings, to confer degrees, and so forth. Government, too, have just had a fortnight's use of it, for examinations under the War Department. The main building is the new home of three scientific societies: the Royal and Linnæan on the first floor, which comprises the state apartments; the Chemical on the ground-floor. The Linnæans have also a room-for their museum

on the ground-floor; other parts of the building are tenanted by the assistant-secretaries. All the expense of removal, of furnishing and fitting up the rooms, and laying on gas, has been borne by the several societies; house-room and water only being given by the government.

The library and collections of the Linnæan Society make a better show than in their late quarters, the gloomy old house in Soho Square. The shabby-looking books which belonged to Linnæus himself, and the ungraceful cases in which he kept his herbarium, are now preserved in a handsome glass-case in the Society's principal room-what was formerly the great ball-room

along with their library and some other collections. To the Linnæans, the removal is a great benefit; for the heavy sum which they have hitherto had to pay as rent, will now become available for the printing of Transactions, and the promotion of their special science generally.

The same may be said of the Chemical Society; instead of paying rent, as they had to do in Cavendish Square, they will now have a fund to defray the cost of patient researches and astonishing experiments. They have fitted up their meeting-room with the seats from the Royal Society's meeting-room at Somerset House; and talking of these seats, we are reminded of a little matter of testimony in their history. On removing them from the place where they had been fixed for so many years, there was seen chalked on the floor underneath: Billy Wilson, Richd. Sides, Silly Thos. Teal, and Robt. Thompson laid these seats in the year of our Lord 1780. Henceforth, the three societies will meet on the same evening, Thursday, so that when business is concluded, they may all come together in the Royal Society's Lower Library for their cup of tea and friendly gossip, and so establish a series of conversazioni from November to June.

Besides the Lower Library above mentioned, the Royal Society have rearranged the chief portion of their library in six rooms on the first floor. You approach by a broad stair, in a well-lighted hall, of which the walls and ceiling are decorated by pictures from the pencil of Sebastian Ricci. In the paintings on the walls, the figures are life-size: a goddess, probably Venus, drawn in a car by wonderful swimming-horses, attended by gleesome maidens and flying boys on one side; on the other, Diana and her nymphs bathing. The latter, which is painted with considerable freedom, inspired a mot worthy of preservation. A visitor happening to remark that he thought the canvas was loose, a learned professor who stood by, esteemed alike for his ready wit and mastery of science, replied: 'I