bold even to ask from the Prince Regent the
gift of a house near the palace, and received
in reply a grant, not of the house, but of two
hundred and thirty-two pounds yearly.  This
grant expired with the life of George the
Fourth, and was then exchanged for the yearly
royal contribution of a hundred guineas;
that sum being paid by the crown towards
the maintenance of this society in common
with some other societies.  David Williams
was, no doubt, glad enough to get a house
for nothing; but he never was disposed
to spend the young resources of his fund
on housekeeping, to the diminution of its
power to be helpful to those needing its
assistance.  At first he hired a room, when it
was wanted, for a meeting.  Afterwards,
when great men—who, while success was
doubtful, had discouraged it—came, ostensibly,
to lend him the blaze of their names, really, to
obtain the credit of connection with an
honourable and successful scheme; and
when, after a tough opposition from the
crown lawyers, an imperfect charter was
extorted, Williams himself did all the
hard work of the institution.  It has, he
says, "its apparatus of great officers, councils,
and committees; but it has really been
formed, and its actual and important business
prepared and conducted, principally by
its original founder."  A clerk at forty pounds
a-year was the sole paid assistant, and there
was more business then to be done than now;
for the labour of first establishment was
going on, and the subscription list (attention
to which is now, as we shall see, very costly)
was then four times larger than it is at
present.  In eighteen hundred and two there
were within six of four hundred annual
subscribers; whereas now there are only about
one hundred: so serious has been the
waste of substance, caused by years of
affliction under that insidious malady,
Routine.

When David Williams died, his work fell
into the hands of the "apparatus of great
officers, councils, and committees."  This
includes under the charter three honorary
registrars, all or one of whom shall, according
to the rules, attend every meeting to
read minutes, orders, letters, and conduct
the correspondence of the fund.  As there
are not a dozen meetings in the year, by
a division of this work among themselves,
the registrars might do the duties of their
office at a cost of little trouble to themselves;
of much less trouble certainly than scores
of high-minded and influential men who
would gladly take to do a right and kind
thing in a useful way.  The society has also
three honorary treasurers, who are appointed
to receive all moneys and to draw all
cheques.  Here again there is light labour
to divide among the gentlemen who hold
these offices, if they might be allowed to do
their own work.  The help of a clerk at
fifty pounds a-year would reduce the work of
the whole six to something scarcely worth
considering as work.  There are appointed,
also, three honorary auditors to examine the
accounts.  Then there is, of course, a president,
and there are vice-presidents; there is a
council, and there is a committee.  The
members of council, as the charter directs,
are to be (with the president and vice-
presidents) twenty of the most experienced
members of the society, "elected out of
those members who shall have served for
three years upon the general committee;" and
if the number of members of council cannot
be made up out of the general committee, then
the main body of the members are to supply
the deficiency.  The general committee is to
be chosen from among the members; but it is
to include a dash of experience in the shape
of four gentlemen taken from the council.
It is thus evidently meant that the council
shall hold the character of the discreeter body
in the establishment.  Therefore, we do not
wonder that the council has been shelved; for
certainly, in the management of the Fund
for many years past, the word of discretion
has been known as nothing but the word of
strife.  In one respect the directions of
the charter never were obeyed.  No
distinction was preserved between the
meetings of the council and those of the
committee; both bodies met together; until,
in the year eighteen hundred and forty-
eight, it occurred to a member of the
committee to ask, whether the council could
attend committee meetings legally. Counsel's
opinion decided that it could not, and
the council was accordingly projected into
space.  Since that time the council has been
but a dead branch on a sickly tree.  It fulfils
no purpose in existence, except to declare the
progress of decay.  For the last eight years,
the affairs of the Fund have been managed
by a general committee only; and this
committee recruits itself, once every year, with
members of its own choice, named for
election on a printed paper called a house
list.

Let us not omit to add, as an item in the
history, that Mr. Thomas Newton, who died
in the year eighteen hundred and seven
believing himself to be the last descendant of Sir
Isaac Newton, bequeathed to the Literary
Fund an estate now worth two hundred pounds
a-year, as a compensation for the loss of
George the Fourth's expired grant.  The
society now receives dividends on stock of the
value of little less than thirty thousand
pounds, so that it has a fixed income of one
thousand and eighty pounds a-year; to which
the annual produce of subscriptions and
donations, adds about another thousand.  It has,
therefore, roughly speaking, an income of two
thousand a-year.

This sum is intended for the relief of "men
of genius and learning," who fall into distress;
and is subject to no necessary charge
beyond the cost of a place in which to hold