confirmation of his promotion by the admiralty he
attributed to the kind interest of Admiral Pasley.

When he quitted his ship at Deptford in October, 1800, he was a man of
mark. His name was honourably known to the elders of his profession,
whilst he was esteemed by men concerned with geography, navigation, and
kindred branches of study, for the importance of the work he had done,
and for the thorough scientific spirit manifested in it.

Chief among those who recognised his quality was Sir Joseph Banks, the
learned and wealthy squire who was ever ready to be to zealous men of
science a friend, a patron, and an influence. Banks was, indeed,
memorable for the men and work he helped, rather than for his own
original contributions to knowledge. During his presidency of the Royal
Society, from 1777 to 1820--a long time for one man to occupy the
principal place in the most distinguished learned body in the world--he
not only encouraged, but promoted and directed, a remarkable radiation of
research work, and was the accessible friend of every man of ability
concerned in extending the bounds of enquiry into phenomena.

Banks took a special interest in the young navigator, who was a native of
his own bit of England, Lincolnshire. He knew well what a large field for
geographical investigation there was in Australia, and recognised that
Flinders was the right man to do the work. Banks had always foreseen the
immense possibilities of the country; he was the means of sending out the
naturalists George Caley, Robert Brown, and Allan Cunningham, to study
its natural products. That he was quick to recognise the sterling
capacity of Matthew Flinders constitutes his principal claim to our
immediate attention. The spirit of our age is rather out of sympathy with
the attitude of patronage, which, as must be confessed, it gratified
Banks to assume; but at all events it was, in this instance, patronage of
the only tolerable sort, that which helps an able man to fulfil himself
and serve his kind.

Before he went to sea again, Flinders was married (April 1801) to Miss
Ann Chappell, stepdaughter of the Rev. William Tyler, rector of
Brothertoft, near Boston. She was a sailor's daughter, her own father
having died while in command of a ship out of Hull, engaged in the Baltic
trade. It is probable that there was an attachment between the pair
before Flinders left England in 1794; for during the Norfolk expedition
in 1798 he had named a smooth