20 MAY 1843, Page 13

LEARNED SOCIETIES.

THE flowers of a London season, like the flowers of an English summer, blossom in succession—by relays, to borrow a phrase from posting establishments. In our gardens the violets have been suc- ceeded by the lilacs, which are already fading and giving place to the laburnums. A couple of weeks since, the Exeter Hall roses of Sharon and lilies of the valley were in full bloom ; they have passed away, and the cryptogamia of the Learned Societies are coming into fructification—for, as its name indicates, this class hath no visible flower.

A very peculiar branch are they these Society-members of the men of letters. They are a kind of Quakers in literature—the belles- leltristes being its gay and gaudy world—they affect the useful and unostentatious. Yet they too must have their days of display, as the serious people must have their days of sober dissipation. Hence the annual meetings of Entomologists, Botanists, Geologists, Mi- croscopians, Astronomers, Phrenologists, Geographers, and all whose names terminate in let, Ian, or Cr, to receive reports and bestow medals. The shapeless and dun-coloured glowworm has its season of radiance ; and so have its modest analoge among the human race, the peepers through magnifying-glasses, the dissecters of insect-wings, the discoverers of anomalous structures in a cab- bage-blade—all who plod on through life adding minute fact to fact, until the heap has become big enough to make a mouthful for some theorist, who snaps it up, as a Chinaman does the eaihle nest built up with equal labour by the Java swallows, and amain ilates it with his system. It is aot, however, on these their gaudy days that the distinctive peculiarities of the Society-member are to be found out. They resemble their ordinary selves at these times as little as the Tom Pinch expanding under the genial influence of John Westlock's wine, resembled the Tom Pinch succumbing to Miss Pecksuiff's abridgment of his butter at breakfast. Would you know the Society- member aright, you must observe him as Annuiscav, Wilson, and La Vamearer observed birds—by frequenting his haunts for years, and lurking unobserved to see how he goes on when he thinks no one is watching him. There are exceptions, but in general the Society-member is a man of rather minikin intellectual stature. As in the animal so in the thinking world, conscious weakness is a frequent motive to as- sociation. There are men who can think, after a fashion, in com- pany, bait cannot achieve the feat when alone—these are the ma- terials of which Society-members are made. It is a pleasing sight isr the philanthropist blessed with leisure to watch their proceed- ings for a whole winter. They are like mesmeric patients thrown into the state of clairvoyance by mutual contact—waking up into intelligence while in this condition, to relapse into hebetude when they separate. They are like ants, each bringing on its over- laden shoulders its small grain of wheat or infinitesimal particle of straw, each thinking with wonder what a load it bears, each astounded at the magnitude to which its contribution will seen the general heap. Their exaggerated estimate of the importance of their own small doings does not excite derision, for there is sincerity and benevolence in their Liliputian en- thusiasm, and their little labours, like those of the submarine insects which build the coral reefs, do at last grow up to some- thing. GOETHE has said, somewhere, that he had the talent but not the taste for play ; the class now under review have the taste for science, though the talent may be doubted. Yet is there something beautiful in their longing after what they cannot comprehend— their faith in the grandeur and beauty of knowledge, which they sae as through a glass, very dimly. This faith intellectual, like mligious faith, can lend dignity to the weakest natures, and com- mands not" merely toleration but respect for the merest rosy- cheeked middle-aged gentleman in blue coat with gilt buttons and white kid gloves, who ever rose at the conclusion of a long discus- sion to make a remark which showed that not one word had he understood, and then sat down radiant with delight at having taken a part in what the age of SHAESPEILE might have called the wit tournament.

All in these reunions are not thus single-minded : some join them with an eye to the main chance. Young gentlemen about town, too poor, too diffident, and too honest to push their way in the bean-monde, find a substitute in Societies and Conversaziones of Society-men. And the gregarious souls who compose them, being known to be of friendly and helpful dispositions, are not unfre- qtsently used as stepping-stones to active employment. It would be a curious and not altogether unedifying inquiry, to search the list of Diplomatic and Colonial appointments to discover how many made their way into them through the doors of Societies. Some have even been known to reach the quarter-deck by this road. The means are legitimate enough : the greatest difficulty that young men of talent and energy experience at the outset of their career, is to find an opportunity of showing what is in them ; and there can he no more legitimate field of display than that of science and its practical applications. But the recommendations of learned (or unlearned) Societies may be trusted too far : there is an esprit du corps about them, and withal a bonhommie, that render it necessary to take their testimony to the official aptitude of any one with a large allowance.