764 MEMOIRS OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 



donor. But so little are the feelings of others in unison 

 with mine on this occasion, and so strange is this donation 

 of half a million of dollars for the noblest of purposes, that 

 no one thinks of attributing it to a benevolent motive. 

 Vail intimates in his letter that the man was supposed to 

 be insane. Bankhead thinks he must have had republican 

 propensities ; which is probable. Colonel Aspinwall con- 

 jectures that Mr. Smithson was an antenuptial son of the 

 first Duke and Duchess of Northumberland, and thus an 

 elder brother of the late Duke, but how he came to have a 

 nephew named Hungerford, son of a brother named Dick- 

 inson, and why he made this contingent bequest to the 

 United States of America, no one can tell. The report, if 

 it hazards any reflection upon the subject, must be very 

 guarded. Mr. Bankhead thought it was a fine windfall for 

 the city of Washington, and hoped if a professor of divinity 

 should be wanted we should remember his friend Hawley. 

 Mrs. Bankhead was in admiration of the splendid edifice 

 that might be erected with the money. 



Colonel Aspinwall said it would be easy to obtain the in- 

 formation which I desired in England, but that he had made 

 no inquiries at the time when he had procured and for- 

 warded to the Department of State a copy of the will, be- 

 cause the bequest was then contingent, and it was very 

 uncertain whether it would ever take effect. The will was 

 made in 182^ — the year before which, the testator's nephew, 

 the present Duke of Northumberland, had been upon a 

 magnificent Embassy Extraordinary at the coronation of 

 Charles the Tenth of France. There seems to have been a 

 determination in the mind of the testator that his estate 

 should in no event go to the Duke of Northumberland or 

 to any of his family. But certainly in the bequest itself 

 there is a high and honorable sentiment of philanthropy, 

 and a glorious testimonial of confidence in the institutions 

 of this Union. A stranger to this country, knowing it only 

 by its history, bearing in his person the blood of the Percys 

 and the Seymours, brother to a nobleman of the highest 

 rank in British heraldry, who fought against the revolution 

 of our independence at Bunker's Hill — that he should be 

 the man to found, at the city of Washington, for the United 

 States of America, an establishment for the increase and 

 diflusion of knowledge among men, is an event in which I 

 see the finger of Providence, compassing great results by 

 incomprehensible means. May the Congress of the Union 

 be deeply impressed with the solemn duties devolving upon 

 them by this trust, and carry it into eflPect in the fullness of 



