4 The Smithsoniaft Instihttion 



ally managing their estates ; and, notwithstanding his culture 

 and his refined and artistic tastes, the business aptitude of 

 his race was strong in Smithson's father. 



The entertaining story of his courtship of the grand- 

 daughter of "the proud Duke" of Somerset is told in the 

 "Annals of the House of Percy," and it is not necessary to 

 repeat it here further than to remark that in it, as in every- 

 thing else, he showed the tact, persistence, and ability which 

 raised him from the position of a private gentleman to one of 

 the first dukedoms of England at a time when such a transi- 

 tion was regarded as transcending all possibility, and became 

 the subject of wonder after it had happened. 



As a landlord. Sir Hugh Smithson (as he afterwards be- 

 came) ^ had been conspicuous for good management. After 

 his marriage to the heiress of the Percys he restored Aln- 

 wick Castle, and lived there so expensively that Horace 

 Walpole wrote of the new groom and bride that they would 

 soon have no estate left ; but the prophecy was falsified by the 

 marked ability of the future Duke, who, though he continued 

 to maintain what was even then considered magnificent state, 

 showed such extraordinary administrative capacity as enabled 

 him not only to keep undiminished but to very greatly increase 

 the important possessions which became his wife's after their 

 marriage; for at the date of Sir Hugh Smithson's marriage, 

 in 1749, the rent rolls of Alnwick Castle amounted to ^8,607, 

 while in 1778 they had increased to ^^50,000, and all this 

 while a liberal and even magnificent scale of expenditures 

 appears to have been adopted.^ 



If he be a benefactor to mankind who makes two blades 

 of grass grow where one grew before, then the new Lord of 



1 He succeeded to the title of Baronet on 2 See "Annals of the House of Percy," by 



the death of his grandfather, Sir Hugh Smith- Edward Barrington de Fonblanque, London, 

 son, which took place in 1729. i887,Volume 11, page 531, and Appendix xxvi. 



