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1.]   ANTECEDENTS.   23

be brought before the councils of scientific societies. There can be no doubt but that the upper classes of a nation like our own, which are largely and continually recruited by selections from below, are by far the most productive of natural ability. The lower classes are, in truth, the "residuum."

Of the 6 clergymen or ministers who were fathers of scientific men, no less than 4 appear in a second category, viz., (1) clergyman and schoolmaster ; (2) physician, afterwards clergyman ; (3) Unitarian minister and schoolmaster ; (4) professor of classics, afterwards an Independent minister. Among the successful graduates of Oxford and Cambridge, and among purely literary men, we find a much larger proportion of sons of clergymen. There is at Cambridge a well-known university scholarship, called the " Bell," which is open only to sons of clergymen of the Church of England. As it has been chiefly given for classical proficiency, we may be almost sure that the senior classic of his year, if he were the son of a clergyman, would also be a Bell scholar. I looked through