Other members of the society in Hill Street were Lawrence Sulivan, the rival of Clive at the India House,[1] Serjeant Glynn and Alderman Townshend, Dunning and Pratt, Francis the translator of Horace, Calcraft and Nugent, George Dempster the future patron of Burns, and Captain Howe, who writing from India, had announced his intention of coming back, "and improving in husbandry under so experienced a farmer as Lord Shelburne must undoubtedly have become, if he cultivated the favourable disposition he so strongly shewed for retirement from the noise of the world."[2] Blackstone too, was a frequent visitor, and was introduced to the King by Shelburne. Alluding in a letter to Shelburne to his wish to become the Head of a College, the future author of the Commentaries on the Laws of England thus expressed himself on a subject which was only just beginning to force itself on the attention of the public men of the country as follows in writing:
"I should then also find leisure and opportunity to open another plan, which I have long meditated, and which my present situation in the University (as Principal of a Hall) would give me opportunity to put in practice; I mean some improvements in the methods of academical education, by retaining the useful parts of it stripped of monastic pedantry, by supplying its defects, and adopting it more peculiarly to gentlemen of rank and fortune; whereas the basis of the present forms is principally calculated for the priesthood, while the instruction of laymen (whatever be their quality or profession), is only a collateral object. The Universities were founded when the little learning of the times was monopolized by the Clergy. They politicly meant it should continue so, and ordered their Institutions accordingly."[3]
Hume too, had been a visitor in Hill Street, and on leaving London placed on record his pleasant recollec-
