The motion to adjourn was carried. The youngest member proposed to
make up a purse for the author producing the best dissertation
addressed to the society upon a subject which Sterne considered of
such importance; but at the end of the seance eighteen shillings was
the total sum found in the hat of the president.

The above debate of the society, which had recently been formed in
London for the improvement of manners and of marriage and which Lord
Byron scoffed at, was transmitted to us by the kindness of W. Hawkins,
Esq., cousin-german of the famous Captain Clutterbuck. The extract may
serve to solve any difficulties which may occur in the theory of bed
construction.

But the author of the book considers that the English society has
given too much importance to this preliminary question. There exists
in fact quite as many reasons for being a _Rossinist_ as for being a
_Solidist_ in the matter of beds, and the author acknowledges that it
is either beneath or above him to solve this difficulty. He thinks
with Laurence Sterne that it is a disgrace to European civilization
that there exist so few physiological observations on callipedy, and
he refuses to state the results of his Meditations on this subject,
because it would be difficult to formulate them in terms of prudery,
and they would be but little understood, and misinterpreted. Such
reserve produces an hiatus in this part of the book; but the author
has the pleasant satisfaction of leaving a fourth work to be
accomplished by the next century, to which he bequeaths the legacy of
all that he has not accomplished, a negative munificence which may
well be followed by all those who may be troubled by an overplus of
ideas.