previously acted as secretary; and an evidence is given of the high sense entertained by that body for his services and his virtues, by their expulsion of Dr. Woodward from the council, for affronting him by making grimaces, and by interrupting him, while reading a paper of his own composition, with a grossly insulting remark. Sir Isaac Newton was in the chair when the expulsion of Woodward came under discussion; and some one pleading in his favour that he was a good natural philosopher, Newton interfered with the remark, that "in order to belong to that Society, a man ought to be a good moral philosopher as well as a good natural one." In 1746 Sloane retired from practice; and in 1748 he was visited by the Prince of Wales, the father of George III., who went to see a collection and library that were the ornament of the nation. The Prince duly estimated the value and excellence of the collection, and at the same time remarked "how much it must conduce to the benefit of learning, and how great an honour must redound to Britain, to have it established for public use to the latest posterity." It is probable that by this time the intention of Sir Hans to bequeath his collection to the nation had transpired; at all events, when he died, in 1752, it was found by his will that his collections, which had cost £50,000, and included 50,000 books and manuscripts, had been left to the nation, on condition of the payment of £20,000 to his heirs. Parliament voted £100,000 to fulfil the bargain and increase the collection; and in 1759 the British Museum, founded on Sir Hans Sloane's bequest, was first opened at Montague House. Sir Hans had the reputation of being one of the most abstemious and parsimonious of eminent physicians--his absorbing love for his museum forbidding us to blame or sneer at a failing from which the country reaped such splendid fruit. He is said to have given up his winter soirees in Bloomsbury Square, to save the tea and bread and butter he had to dispense to the guests. At one of the latest of these entertainments, Handel was present, and gave grave offence to the scientific baronet by laying a muffin on one of his books. "To be sure it was a gareless trick," said the composer, a little brutally, when telling the story, "bud it tid no monsdrous mischief; bud it pode the old poog-vorm treadfully oud of sorts. I offered my best apologies, bud the old miser would not have done with it. If it had been a biscuit it would not have mattered; but muffin and pudder! And I said, 'Ah, mine Gotd, that is the rub!--it is the pudder!' Now, mine worthy friend, Sir Hans Sloane, you have a nodable excuse, you may save your doast and pudder, and lay it to that unfeeling gormandizing German; and den I knows it will add something to your life by sparing your burse.'" THE REV. ROWLAND HILL,