THE SOCIETY OF SCIENCE, LETTERS, AND ART.

TO THE EDITOR, Sib,—Several months ago the Society of Science, Letters, And Art, of London, was the subject of an article in London Truth. lam informed that the article was reprinted in your paper. I wish you and your readers to know that the article in question is a tiissue of misrepresentations of the purposes and proceedings of that society, ; and was evidently intended to make a worthy and useful institution. appear ridiculous, and therefore an object of public deridon. I have been a fellow of that society for the past nine years, and regard it as a great privilege to be associated with its distinguished and capable fellows aad members. I therefore know, something of its purposes and proceedings, and indignantly resent the baseless and mischievous slanders contained in the article referred to. I therefore trust to your respect for truth and fair play to permit me to state what I know of the society and its doings, and so afford you the opportunity to, in some measure, mitigate the mischief that.you have unwittingly done by copying calumnies from the columns of a notorious London newspaper. : The Society of Science, Letters, and Art, of London, is located at Addison House, 160, Holland Road, Kensington, a commodious and handsome building, including a spacious library, museum, and large lecture hall. The society exists for the advancement of science, letters, and art; its affairs are managed by a president, several vice-presi-dents, a numerous Council, and two paid secretaries; its fellows and members are University graduates, Fellows', of learned societies, authors, and others eminent in science, literature, and art; it holds periodical meetings for lectures, etc., for the reading ' of original and interesting papers, for tho promotion of new works, discoveries, and inventions, and for the diffusion of useful knowledge; it also publishes a quarterly journal of its transactions. The society is supported entirely by the contributions of its fellows and members without asking or receiving pecuniary assistance from the outside public; the persons who contribute the money and also manage its > expenditure are content. If they, are satisfied with the manner in which their own money is expended it surely can be no other person's business; it is therefore nothing other than meddlesome impertinence for outsiders: to interfere with, and also mean mendacious wickedness to scandalously misrepresent their purposes and proceedings. To pillory in the public press and to brand as frauds a number of persons associated for such laudable and useful purposes is intolerable and infamous, and in this case aptly illustrates how mischievous the liberty of the Press may become when abused by spiteful writers,—l am, etc., C. Frusher Howard, F.S.S.C., Author of the Art of Reckoning December 26, 1893.