object of the
institution, attributing to it aims neither consistent with the ascetic
life of the departed prelate, nor with the pious and intellectual
objects of its founders. The counsels of these worldly-minded persons
prevailed. The Jolly Club was never instituted,--at least, as an
association for the reprinting of old books of divinity, though I am not
prepared to say that institutions more than one so designed may not
exist for other purposes. The object, however, was not entirely
abandoned. A body of gentlemen united themselves together under the name
of another Scottish prelate, whose fate had been more distinguished, if
not more fortunate; and the Spottiswoode Society was established. Here,
it will be observed, there was a passing to the opposite extreme; and so
intense seems to have been the anxiety to escape from all excuse for
indecorous jokes or taint of joviality, that the word Club, wisely
adopted by other bodies of the same kind, was abandoned, and this one
called itself a Society. To that abandonment of the _medio tutissimus_
has been attributed its early death by those who contemn the taste of
those other communities, essentially Book Clubs, which have taken to the
devious course of calling themselves "Societies."

In fact, all our _societies_, from the broad-brimmed Society of Friends
downwards, have something in them of a homespun, humdrum, plain,
flat--not unprofitable, perhaps, but unattractive character. They may be
good and useful, but they have no dignity or splendour, and are quite
destitute of the strange meteoric power and grandeur which have
accompanied the career of _Clubs_. Societies there are, indeed, which
identify themselves through their very nomenclature with misfortune and
misery, seeming proudly to proclaim themselves victims to all the
saddest ills that flesh is heir to--as, for instance, Destitute Sick
Societies, Indigent Blind Societies, Deaf and Dumb Societies, Burial
Societies, and the like. The nomenclature of some of these benevolent
institutions seems likely to test the etymological skill of the next
generation of learned men. Perhaps some ethnological philosopher will
devote himself to the special investigation and development of the
phenomenon; and if such things are done then in the way in which they
are now, the result will appear in something like the following shape:--

"Man, as we pursue his destiny from century to century, is still found
inevitably to resolve himsel