Many present will remember in more recent times how Charles Dickens, when returning thanks for this toast, expressed the same sentiment of relationship by altering some words of Rob Roy's and saying that when at our Academy he felt so much at home, as to be inclined to exclaim: 'My foot is on my native heath, although my name is not Macgregor.' Next to religion, literature in very many of its phases supplies the noblest subjects for Art. History, Biography, and works of fiction all contribute their share; while poetry enjoys the cumulative privilege of uniting in itself the incentives to Art which are commanded by all other branches of Literature as well as the ennobling sentiments inspired by religion, patriotism and other affections of the human heart. An elevating mission, indeed, be it only directed in a worthy course. Frivolity and license are alike the bane of literature and art. Earnestness of purpose and severity of moral tone are the stamina of both. Shorn of these, both alike find their strength is gone from them. It is consoling to reflect that notwithstanding the laborious turmoil of politics we have had three, and I think successive, Prime Ministers who have made Literature the solace of their scanty leisure and delighted the world by their writings on subjects extraneous to State politics. I give you the 'Interests of Literature,' and I have the honor to connect the toast with the name of one of that distinguished trio, the Right Honorable William Ewart Gladstone."] MR. CHAIRMAN, YOUR ROYAL HIGHNESS, MY LORDS AND GENTLEMEN:--I think no question can be raised as to the just claims of literature to stand upon the list of toasts at the Royal Academy, and the sentiment is one to which, upon any one of the numerous occasions of my attendance at your hospitable board, I have always listened with the greatest satisfaction until the present day arrived, when I am bound to say that that satisfaction is extremely qualified by the arrangement less felicitous, I think, than any which preceded it that refers to me the duty of returning thanks for Literature. [Cheers and laughter.] However, obedience is the principle upon which we must proceed, and I have at least the qualification for discharging the duty you have been pleased to place in my hands--that no one has a deeper or more profound sense of the vital importance of the active and constant cultivation of letters as an essential condition of real progress and of the happiness of mankind [cheers], and here every one at once perceives that that sisterhood of which the poet spoke, whom you have quoted, is a real sisterhood, for literature and art are alike the votaries of beauty. Of these votaries I may thankfully say that as regards art I trace around me no signs of decay, and none in that estimation in which the Academy is held, unless to be sure, in the circumstance of your poverty of choice of one to reply to this toast. [Cheers.]