452 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 
which he attained the post of Inspector-General of Naval 
Works. Among the services he rendered was that of bring- 
ing to England the distinguished engineer Isambard Mark 
Brunel. In the year 1805, General Bentham was sent by the 
Admiralty to St. Petersburg, to superintend the building in 
Russia of vessels for the British navy. He took his family 
with him ; and there began the education of George Bentham, 
in the fifth year of his age, under the charge of a Russian 
lady who could speak no English, where he learned to con- 
verse fluently in Russian, French, and German, besides ac- 
quiring the rudiments of Latin as taught by a Russian priest. 
On the way back to England, two or three years later, the 
detention of a month or two in Sweden gave opportunity for 
learning enough of Swedish to converse in that language and 
to read it with tolerable ease in after life. Returning to 
England, the family settled at Hampstead, and the children 
pursued their studies under private tutors. In the years 
1812-13, during the excitement produced by the French in- - 
vasion of Russia and the burning of Moscow, our young poly- 
glot “budded into an author, by translating (along with his 
brother and sister) and contributing to a London magazine a 
series of articles from the Russian newspapers, detailing the 
operations of the armies.” In 1814, upon the downfall of 
Napoleon, the Bentham family crossed over to France, pre- 
pared for a long stay, remained in the country (at Tours, 
Saumur, and Paris) during the hundred days preceding 
Napoleon’s final overthrow, and in 1816 Sir Samuel Bent- 
ham set out upon a prolonged and singular family tour, en 
caravane, through the western and southern departments of 
France. To quote from the published account from which 
most of these biographical details are drawn, and which were 
taken from Mr. Bentham’s own memoranda ! — 
“The cortége consisted of a two-horse coach fitted up as a 
sleeping apartment ; a long, low, two-wheeled, one-horse spring 
van for General and Mrs. Bentham, furnished with a library 
and piano; and another, also furnished, for his daughters and 
their governess. The plan followed was to travel by day 
1 An article in “ Nature,” Oct. 2, 1884, by Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker. 
