A CHEMICAL TRIAD. 



CAVENDISH. 



IT is the biographer's privilege to be present at the hearth 

 and home of the subject of his memoir, to see his every-day 

 performances, to chronicle his acts, without explaining to the 

 world how the home was invaded, how the observing eye 

 found means to cross the barrier, or the recording pen to 

 write. I ask the reader, then, by force of will, to annihilate 

 the last sixty years, and to imagine himself the world's denizen 

 in 1810, and follow me. 



We go to witness a death-bed scene. Clapham is the local- 

 ity; the house is, at the period of this narrative, known as 

 Cavendish House. We enter : the domicile has all the aspect 

 of a gentleman's mansion ; but its interior arrangement is sa 

 peculiar that one wonders what the owner's avocation can 

 be. One chamber we see fitted up like a blacksmith's shop. 

 Here are anvils, forges, tempering troughs, files, hammers^ 

 and in short almost everything that a blacksmith could re- 

 quire; but there are other things too, which a blacksmith 

 would not have. Philosophical apparatus lie about in con- 

 fusion. Here an air-pump taken to pieces, there a transit 

 instrument, yonder the compensation pendulum of a clock. 

 Vainly we look for the artificer he is not there. Wending 

 our way through a long corridor we open a door, and pass 

 into a suite of noble apartments. Their aspect is equally 

 strange with the last, but quite different. They are devoid 



