550 APPENDIX OF NOTES. 



T>:irtnn married Mr Conduitt of Cranbury, in Ilampsliire, member 

 of rarliaiiu-iit, and much valued by Xewton. Their only child 

 Catherine, bom in 1718., married, in 1740, Mr Wallop, afterwards 

 Lord Lymington. From one of her daughters the Portsmouth 

 family are descended. There can therefore be 110 question that if 

 Mr Oilier did (as nobody denies) marry a Miss Barton, it was not 

 Catherine the 1 niece of Sir Isaac Xewton. 



I am equally persuaded that Sydney Smith himself would never 

 wilfully have claimed this connection with Xewton : he was far 

 above any such pretensions, unless upon sure grounds. From all I 

 ever knew of him he would not only have objected to, but would 

 have laughed at, his nephew's foolish weakness in dropping the 

 most respectable, and in their case distinguished, name of Smith, 

 and assuming that of Vernon, merely because his father Debus 

 married a Miss Vernon of Hilton, but who no more represented 

 the Vernons of Hilton than she represented the Plantagenets. 



XVIII. (p. 250.) 



I)r John Thomson, born at Paisley, 1705; died at Edinburgh, 

 1840. He was called by his contemporaries "the most learned of 

 physicians ;" and the discursive character of his scientific acquire- 

 ments rendered him valuable to the body of young men in Edin- 

 burgh, who, at the beginning of the century, were ambitious of 

 adding physical science to their acquirements in law, politics, and 

 general scholarship. In January 1800, writing about the condi- 

 tion and prospects of "The Natural History Society," he says: 

 "Various plans of relief were proposed, and I at last suggested the 

 turning the Society into a chemical society, that should provide 

 itself with an apparatus and occasionally make experiments. The 

 proposal has since been talked of among the members, and is, I 

 Relieve, universally approved of. In mentioning it to llorner, he 

 proposed an alliance with tin; Academy of Physics. Brougham, in 

 the meantime, came home, and has entered keenly into our views. 

 . . . . Perhaps I am too sanguine; but I conceive that if I 

 can give to the infant society a good organisation, it may become 

 an institution which you will have pleasure in patronising. We 

 shall be able to draw into it all the young men of the place who 

 have any turn for physical researches. It is proposed to meet in 



