To all the above mentioned distinctions, equally high, equally honourable, and equally deserved, your Royal Highness, on the principle just stated,--that you have still countenance enough to bestow on meritorious institutions,--has intimated your gracious intention of succeeding Sir Joseph Banks as President of the Royal Society. Amongst your many and obvious claims to this situation, the first is, that you are a _fishmonger_; for thus your Royal Highness will be in a condition to solve that celebrated problem propounded to the Society by its Royal Founder Charles the Second, and which has not been yet satisfactorily explained, relative to the respective gravities of fish, dead or alive. Nor if the late President had been a fishmonger, would the Society have been involved in the failure and disgrace of that experiment which the indignant poet has immortalized by the line "Fleas are not lobsters--Damn their souls!" But though I could not avoid touching upon these matters, it is as a citizen of London, and as the condescending friend of our most patriotic magistrates--our modern Whittingtons--that I presume to address your Royal Highness, and to solicit your favour to an essay towards the history of that great man, the honour of which cannot fail to be reflected on his successors; and in addition to this gracious patronage for myself, I am charged by others to solicit your Royal Highness, to be pleased to lend your name as President to a new literary and most useful association, held in Bearbinder Lane, at the back of the Mansion House, called "The Whittington Institution, for teaching Aldermen to read, write, cypher, and dance, on Mr. Lancaster's system." In humble hope of your Royal Highness's most gracious condescension, I have the honour to remain, Sir, Your Royal Highness's Most devoted and obedient Servant, VICESIMUS BLINKINSOP. [Illustration: (end of section icon)] TENTAMEN, &c. In looking at the propensities of the age we live in, comparatively with those of times past, one cannot fail to observe a laudable love for the noble science of antiquities: of which it may be truly said, that it is conversant with peaceful and unoffending yesterdays, while the idle votaries of the world are busied about to-day, and the visionaries of ambition are dreaming of to-morrow. Connected with this grave and useful pursuit is the general inclination to search into the minutiæ of history, which never before prevailed amongst us in so ardent a degree. The smallest information upon traditional points is received with an avidity more salutary and commendable than that which is the result of a commonplace love of novelty; and the smaller the information, the greater the merit of the painstaking author; who, like a skilful clock-maker, or other nice handy-craftsman, is lauded in proportion to the minuteness of his work.