Tuesday's Gazette contains an extensively signed petition for incorporation on
behalf of "The British Academy for the Promotion of Historical, Philosophical, and Philological Studies." The petition has grown out of the situation created by the Conference of Academies held at Wiesbaden in October, 1899, when a scheme was drawn up for the organisation of an International Association of the Principal Scientific and Literary Academies of the world, and the second meeting was fixed to be held in London in 1904. It then became apparent that there was no body in Great Britain corresponding to the Royal Society to represent the literary side of the Association, and as the result of a meeting of scholars held at the British Museum last summer it was decided to promote the establishment of a British Academy of Historical, Philosophical, and Philological Studies on conditions that would satisfy the International Association. The petitioners represent the first list of Fellows as nominated at a meeting held in December. The absence of all poets and novelists is sufficiently accounted for by the name and scope of the Academy, which "aims solely at the promotion of the study of moral and political sciences, including history, philosophy, law, politics and economics, archaeology, and philology." But it is impossible to feel much enthusiasm in an Academy from which Tennyson and Browning would, if living, have both been excluded.
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