XI

A PRINCELY GIFT

DESCENT OF JAMES SMITHSON, FOUNDER OF THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION HIS EDUCATION AND HIS WRITINGS HIS

WILL THE UNITED STATES HIS RESIDUARY LEGATEE SUCCESSFUL PROSECUTION OF THE CLAIM OF THE UNITED STATES TO THE LEGACY PLANS SUGGESTED FOR THE DISPOSAL OF THE FUND PROF. JOSEPH HENRY APPOINTED SECRETARY - BENEFICENT WORK OF THE INSTITUTION.

A

LTHOUGH a third of a century has passed since I met Professor Joseph Henry, I distinctly recall his kindly greeting and the courteous manner in which he gave me the information I requested for the use of one of the Committees of the House.

The frosts of many winters were then on his brow, and he was near the close of an honorable career, one of measureless benefit to mankind. He was the first secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, and the originator of the plan by which was carried into practical effect the splendid bequest for "the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men.'

As Vice-President of the United States, a regent ex-officio of the Smithsonian Institution, I had rare opportunity to learn much of its history and something of its marvellous accomplishment. As is well known, it bears the name of James Smithson. He was an Englishman, related to the historic family of Percy, and a lineal descendant of Henry the Seventh, his maternal ancestor being the ill-fated Lady Jane Grey, cousin to Queen Elizabeth.

Mr. Langley, the late secretary of the institution, said: "Smithson always seems to have regarded the circumstances of his birth as doing him a peculiar injustice, and it was apparently this sense that he had been deprived of honors properly his which made him look for other sources of fame than those which birth had denied him, and constituted the motive of the most important action of his life, the creation of the Smithsonian Institution."

The deep resentment of Smithson against the great families who had virtually disowned him, finds vent in a letter yet extant, of which the following is a part: "The best blood of England flows in my veins; on my father's side I am a Northumberland, on my mother's I am related to kings; but this avails me not. My name shall live in the memory of man when the titles of the Northumberlands and the Percys are extinct and forgotten."

How truly his indignant forecast was prophetic is now a matter of history. Few men know much about the once proud families of Northumberland or Percy, but the name of the youth they scornfully disowned lives in the institution he founded, the greatest instrumentality yet devised for "the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men."

Smithson was born in 1765, and received the degree of Master of Arts from Pembroke College at the age of twentyone. A year later he was admitted a Fellow of the Royal Society, upon the recommendation of his instructors, as being "a gentleman well versed in the various branches of Natural Philosophy, and particularly in Chemistry and Mineralogy." As a student, he was devoted to the study of the sciences, especially chemistry, and his entire life, in fact, was given to scientific research. Twenty-seven papers from his pen were published in "The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society" and in "Thompson's Annals of Philosophy," near the close of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, and "all give evidence that he was an assiduous and faithful experimenter."

In this connection, the statement of Professor Clarke, Chief Chemist of the United States Geographical Survey, is in point:

"The most notable feature of Smithson's writings from the standpoint of the analytical chemist, is the success obtained with the most primitive and unsatisfactory appliances. In Smithson's day, chemical apparatus was undeveloped, and instruments were improvised from such materials as lay readiest to hand. With such instruments, and with crude reagents, Smithson obtained analytical results of the most creditable character, and enlarged our knowledge of many mineral species. In his time, the native

carbonate and the silicate of zinc were confounded as one species under the name calamine; but his researches distinguished between the two minerals, which are now known as Smithsonite and Calamine, respectively.

"To theory Smithson contributed little, if anything; but from a theoretical point of view, the tone of his writings is singularly modern. His work was mostly done before Dalton had announced the atomic theory; and yet Smithson saw clearly that a law of definite proportions must exist, although he did not attempt to account for it. His ability as a reasoner is best shown in his paper on the Kirkdale Bone Cave, which Penn had sought to interpret by reference to the Noachian Deluge. A clearer and more complete demolition of Penn's views could hardly be written to-day. Smithson was gentle with his adversary, but none the less thorough, for all his moderation. He is not to be classed among the leaders of scientific thought; but his ability and the usefulness of his contributions to knowledge, cannot be doubted."

The life of Smithson was uncheered by domestic affection; he was of singularly retiring disposition, had no intimacies, spent the closing years of his life in Paris, and was long the uncomplaining victim of a painful malady. Professor Langley said of him:

"One gathers from his letters, from the uniform consideration with which he speaks of others, from kind traits which he showed, and from the general tenor of what is not here particularly cited, the remembrance of an innately gentle nature, but also of a man who is gradually renouncing not without bitterness the youthful hope of fame, and as health and hope diminished together, is finally living for the day, rather than for any future."

He died in Genoa, Italy, June 27, 1829, and was buried in the little English cemetery on the heights of San Benigno. The Institution he founded has placed a tablet over his tomb and surrounded it with evidences of continued and thoughtful

care.

His will possibly of deeper concern to mankind than any yet written - bears date October 23, 1826. In its opening clause he designates himself: "Son of Hugh, First Duke of Northumberland, and Elizabeth, heiress of the Hungerfords of Studley, and niece to Charles the proud Duke of Somerset." Herein clearly appears his undying resentment