CHEiTISTS AXD CHEMISTRY. 



riage, which drove him directly 

 home." 



Sir Humphry Davy, in addi- 

 tion to the eloquent eulogium 

 passed on Cavendish, soon after his 

 death, left this less studied but 

 more graphic sketch of the philo- 

 sopher amongst his papers : " Ca- 

 vendish was a great man, with ex- 

 traordinary singularities. His voice 

 was squeaking, his manner nervous, 

 he was afraid of strangers, and 

 seemed, when embarrassed, even to 

 articulate with difficulty. He wore 

 the costume of our grandfathers ; 

 was enormously rich, but made no 

 use of his wealth. He gave me once 

 some bits of platinum, for my ex- 

 periments, and came to see my re- 

 sults on the decomposition of the 

 alkalis, and seemed to take an in- 

 terest in them ; but he encouraged 



no intimacy with any one 



He lived latterly the life of a soli- 

 tary, came to the club dinner, and 

 to the Koyal Society, but received 

 nobody at his own house. He was 

 acute, sagacious, and profound, and, 

 I think, the most accomplished 

 British philosopher of his time." 



J. G. Children, Esq., was often in 

 the company of Cavendish, and tlms 

 refers to his interviews with him : 

 " I am now the father of the Koyal 

 Society Club. I remember Caven- 

 dish well, and have often dined at 

 the Crown and Anchor with him. 

 When I first became a member of 

 the club I recollect seeing Caven- 

 dish on one occasion talking very 

 earnestly to Marsden, Davy, and 

 Hatchett. I went up and joined 

 the group, my eye caught that of 

 Cavendish, and he instantly became 

 silent ; he did not say a word. The 

 fact is he saw in me a strange face, 

 and of a strange face he had a per- 

 fect horror. . . . He was thus, to 

 appearance, a misanthrope, and still 

 more a misogynist. He was re- 

 ported among his contemporaries 

 indeed to have a positive dislike of 

 women. Lord Burlington informs 



me, on the authority of Mr. Allnutt, 

 an old inhabitant of Clapham, 'that 

 Cavendish would never see a female 

 servant; and if an unfortunate maid 

 ever showed herself she was immedi- 

 ately dismissed? Lord Brougham 

 tells us that Cavendish ' ordered his 

 dinner daily by a note, which he left 

 at a certain hour on the hall table, 

 where the housekeeper was to take 

 it, for he held no communication, 

 with his female domestics from his 

 morbid shyness.' " Dr. George Wil- 

 son, who has ably written the life 

 of Cavendish, -says, "He did not 

 love, he did not hate, he did not 

 hope, he did not fear, he did not 

 worship as others do." He lived 

 and died an almost passionless man. 

 He communed with nature, and 

 elicited many of her hidden truths. 

 " His brain seems to have been a 

 calculating engine ; his eyes inlets 

 of vision, not fountains of tears ; his 

 hands instruments of manipulation 

 which never trembled with emotion, 

 or were clasped together in adora- 

 tion, thanksgiving, or despair ; his 

 heart only an anatomical organ ne- 

 cessary for the circulation of the 

 blood." 



DR. BLACK AND THE HYDROGEN GAS 

 BALLOON. 



Dr. Thomson relates the follow- 

 ing anecdote of Dr. Black, the dis- 

 coverer ot carbonic acid gas and 

 latent heat, in proof of his indiffer- 

 ence to his personal reputation : 

 " There is an anecdote of Black 

 which I was told by the late Mr. 

 Benjamin Bell, of Edinburgh, au- 

 thor of a well-known system of 

 surgery, and he assured me that he 

 had it from the late Sir George 

 Clark, of Pennicuik, who was a 

 witness of the circumstance related. 

 Soon after the appearance of Mr. 

 Cavendish's paper on hydrogen gas, 

 in which he made an approxima- 

 tion to the specific gravity of that 

 body, showing that it was at least 

 ten tunes lighter than common air, 



