1775—80.]

TIIE ROYAL SOCIETY.

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his long Presidency, is intimately connected with hislife 26 . It will, therefore, be unnecessary to do morehere, than briefly remark, that in his anxiety to main-tain the high dignity of the Society , he early tookmeasures, which gave great discontent to a party, andled to dissensions, of which it will be my duty to givea candid and impartial account. Happily they wereonly the summer’s thunder-storm, which having burst,left a purer atmosphere behind, in which Sir JosephBanks lived undisturbed, though not inactive, duringthe remainder of his career.

In 1779, he married Dorothea, eldest daughter ofWilliam Weston Hugessen, Esq., of Provender, in theparish of Norton, in Kent. In 1781, he was createda baronet, and in 1795, he was invested with theorder of the Bath. Though often solicited to sit inParliament , he always declined the honour, preferringrather to dedicate all his time to the Royal Society and science. In 1797, he was made a Privy Coun-cillor. In 1802, he was elected a foreign Member ofthe French Institute. This great honour, it is said,was in some measure brought about by his havinginterfered successfully, on no less than ten differentoccasions, in restoring to France collections of naturalhistory, which had been captured by English vessels;he even sent as far as the Cape of Good Hope to pro-cure some chests belonging to Humboldt ; and it iswell known that his active exertions liberated manyscientific men from foreign prisons.

26 Mr. Brown informs me, that Sir Joseph visited Paris , accom-panied by Sir Charles Blagden , for the purpose of effecting a scien-tific correspondence between the Royal Society and the FrenchAcademy.

YOL. II.

I