SMITHSONIAN BEQUEST. 61 



silently and graduallj' throughout time, yet operating not 

 the less effectually. Not to speak of the inappreciahle 

 value of letters to individual and social man, the monu- 

 ments which they raise to a nation's glory often last when 

 others perish, and seem especially appropriate to the glory 

 of a republic whose foundations are laid in the presumed 

 intelligence of its citizens, and can only be strengthened and 

 perpetuated as that improves. May I also claim to share 

 in the pleasure that attends on relieved anxiety now that 

 the suit is ended ? 



I have made inquiries from time to time, in the hope of 

 finding out something of the man, personally a stranger to 

 our people, who has sought to benefit distant ages by found- 

 ing, in the capital of the American Union, an institution 

 (to describe it in his own simple and comprehensive lan- 

 guage) FOR THE INCREASE AND DIFFUSION OF KNOWLEDGE 



AMONG MEN. I have not heard a great deal. What I have 

 heard and may confide in amounts to this : That he was, in 

 fact, the natural son of the Duke of Northumberland; that 

 his mother was a Mrs. Macie, of an ancient family in Wilt- 

 shire of the name of Hungerford ; that he was educated at 

 Oxford, where he took an honorary degree in 178G ; that 

 he went under the name of James Lewis Macie until a few 

 years after he had left the university, when he took that of 

 Sraithson, ever after signing only James Smithson, as in his 

 will; that he does not appear to have had any fixed home, 

 living in lodgings when in London, and occasionally staying 

 a year or two at a time in cities on the continent, as Paris, 

 Berlin, Florence, Genoa, at which last he died; and that 

 the ample provision made for him by the Duke of ISTorth- 

 umberland. with retired and simple habits, enabled him to 

 accumulate the fortune which now passes to the United 

 States. 1 have inquired if his political opinions or bias 

 w^ere supposed to be of a nature that led him to select the 

 United States as the great trustee of his enlarged and phil- 

 anthropic views. The reply has been, that his opinions, as 

 far as known or inferred, were thought to favor monarch- 

 ical rather than popular institutions ; but that he interested 

 himself little in questions of government, being devoted to 

 science, and chiefly chemistr}- ; that this had introduced 

 him to the society of Cavendish, Wollaston, and others 

 advantageously known to the Royal Society in Loiidon, of 

 which body he was a member, and to the archives of which 

 he made contributions ; and that he also became acquainted, 



