XIV JOURNAL OF PROCEEDINGS OF THE BOARD OF REGENTS. 



Hoogly, and .young Jlodgkins found liini,-<tdf lu'unih'ss and friendless iu Calcutta, 

 where he was taken ill and carried to the hospital. He has since said that it was 

 here, and when he was a sick hid, who was told that ho had not six months to live, 

 that he made np his mind that he would live, that he would acquire a fortune, and 

 that he would devote it to large and philanthropic cuds. 



He recovered sufficiently to prepare a petition to the Governor-(Teneral of India, 

 who was then the Marquis of Hastings, asking for aid to return to England; and 

 he walked a long distance into the country, where the Governor-General was staying 

 at his country seat, to deliver it. He arrived at the vice-regal residence bare footed 

 and ill-clad, and asked an audience with the ruler of India with such persistence 

 that the attenilants, who at first refused, finally consented to present his petition. 

 This so impressed the viceroy when he read it that he directed that the young 

 sailor should be admitted to see him, and the interview that followed ended by his 

 ottering young Hodgkins a jiosition in his household which any gentleman's son 

 might have been willing to accept, but which he refused from his overmastering 

 wish to return to his iather. 



I think this curious adventure (as it may almost be called) deserves narration as 

 an instance both of the remarkable force of Mr. Hodgkins's character and of the evi- 

 dence of gentle breeding Lis manners always bore, and of the jnfluencc both had on 

 others even iu his earliest years. 



After going home he went to Spain, and later, returning to England, he married, and 

 in 1830 came to this country. He immediately engaged iu business, which he pursued 

 with unremitting energy for thirty years, when he retired on what was at that time 

 considered a handsome fortune. The fifteen years following this he spent in trav. 

 elling over Europe and America, and in 1875 he settled down in Setauket, Long 

 Island, upon his place " Brambletye Farm," which he rarely left, except for an 

 occasional visit to New York, until his death. 



Mr. Hodgkins was a man of remarkably self-])oised mind, singularly independent 

 in his modes of thought, and independent also of the need of social converse or of 

 adventitious interests. His opinions were his own, and he found in the reading 

 which confirmed them and iu the care of his little farm abundant and agreeable 

 occupation for his declining years. He was a man of keen intelligence, and by 

 nature, perhaps, still m<\xe a thinker and a scholar than a man of affairs, though 

 even in the latter capacity his ability was proven by his success in business. He 

 possessed a strong will, and had deliberately formed and tenaciously held opinions 

 of his own in relation to religious and philosophical questions. In regard to the 

 former, it may be sufficient to say that his mind was of a devout cast, and that 

 while he had thought much for himself, he retained to the last an absolute trust in 

 the divine guidance as the leading motive of his life. 



Mr. Hodgkins had for more than thirty years made a special study of the atmos- 

 phere in its relations to the well-being of humanity. He believed that most of the 

 physical evils to which mankind are subject arise from the vitiation of the air 

 which they breathe, and that the study of the atmosphere is not unimportant even 

 with relation to man's moral and spiritual, as well as his physical health; and 

 though he did not point out any line of investigation likely to bear fruit in the latter 

 direction, it was his hope that the concentration of thought upon the atmosphere 

 and its study from every point of view, would in time lead to results which would 

 justify his almost devout interest in the subject. 



In this last respect, his beliefs about the atmosphere, otherwise clear enough, 

 wei'e not always easy to follow, T)ut though all those who talked to him were not 

 sure that they here understood his full meaning, it was at least plain that he was 

 well content to place his trust in the charge of such an institution as the Smith- 

 sonian, and to leave it to the future to shape the result. 



He was very explicit, however, in his statements that it was not for sanitary sci- 

 ence Of for meteorology, or for the like branches of study alone or for those which 



