23] An anonymous author, who has attracted some
attention in France, in commenting on the rejection of
Victor Hugo, and the election of a physician, says--that
nothing could be more natural or proper, as the senility
and feebleness of the Academie made it more in want of a
physician than a poet.

The present perpetual secretary of the Academy, Arago, with much of
prejudice, much of egotism, has talents most plastic, an energy of
character, an indomitable will, a force and perspicuity of expression,
which alone give to the sittings of the French Academy a peculiar and
surpassing interest, but which, in the English Society, would be
entirely lost.

In quitting, for the present, the subject of scientific societies, we
must advert to a consequence of the increased number of candidates for
scientific distinction of late years; of which increase the number of
these societies may be regarded as an exponent. This increase,
although on the whole both a cause and a consequence of the
advancement of science, yet has in some respects lowered the high
character of her cultivators by the competition it has necessarily
engendered. Books tell us that the cultivation of science must elevate
and expand the mind, by keeping it apart from the jangling of worldly
interests. This dogma has its false as well as its true side, more
especially when in this, as in every other field of human activity,
the number of competitors is rapidly increasing; great watchfulness is
requisite to resist temptations which beset the aspirant to success on
this arena, more perhaps than in any other. The difficulty which the
most honest find to avoid treading in the footsteps of others--the
different aspect in which the same phenomena present themselves to
different minds--the unwillingness which the mind experiences in
renouncing published but erroneous opinions--are points of human
weakness which, not to mislead, must be watched with assiduous care.
Again, the ease with which plagiarism is committed from the number of
roads by which the same point may be reached, is a great temptation to
the waverer, and a great trial of temper to the victim. The disputants
on the arenae of law, politics, or other pursuits, the ostensible aim
of which is worldly aggrandizement, however animated in debate,
unsparing in satire, reckless in their invective and recrimination,
seldom fail in their private intercourse to throw off the armour of
professional ant