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In the year 1835 two young men of Leicester, a physician and a lawyer, met at an evening party and dispensed with unusual earnestness the condition and prospects of the town. It was a period of great political excitement; party passions separated friends and made general intercourse difficult. The question arose as to how this condition of things could he ameliorated. The young physician had recently been studying in Manchester, and described to bis friend an institution of which he had been a member there and which struck him as a useful means of bringing cultivated men together on a neutral platform. This was the Manchester Literary and Philosophies! Society. The lawyer listening to the physician's lively description of the beneficial action of that society, became inspired with a strong ambition to establish a similar institution in his own town, His friend entered warmly into the scheme, and they began at once to discuss preliminaries. It happened that in polities and theology they were diametrically opposed, bat as the new Society was to ignore theses irritating topics this was rather an advantage than otherwise.

It was agreed that each should invite half a of his personal friends to a preliminary meeting to be held at the Medical Library in the month of June. At this meeting the Leicester Literary and Philosophical Society was established. Thirteen gentlemen were present, of whom six are still living; and among those six are the two founders of the Society—Dr. Shaw and Mr, Alfred Paget.

Dr. Shaw was elected its first President, and Mr. Paget its first Honorary Secretary. A room was engaged, a code of rules drawn up, and the first meeting of the Society was held on the 7th of September, 1835, when the President delivered an admirable opening address on the "Influence of Science upon the Happiness of Mankind."

At that time the population of the town was about 15,000, and the Society started with sixty members subscribing one guinea a year each.

The population is now about 120,000, and the members of the Society about 200,

For the first three years ladies were not admitted, and the attendance at the meetings, which were held monthly at half-past seven in the evening, varied from about ten to thirty.

During these three years many excellent papers were read before the Society, but occasionally a meeting was adjourned for want of an audience. The proposal to admit ladies was warmly debated at four successive meetings, and was at last carried,

At the meeting on October the 18th, 1838, each member was allowed to introduce one lady, and the advertisements and circulars of the succeeding session bore the words "ladies invited." At the same time the meetings began to be held fortnightly instead of monthly.