CAVENDISH, 443 



so perfected by the hand of a master, as to require no 

 correction ; and, though contrived in the infancy of the 

 science, yet to remain unsurpassed, perhaps unequalled, 

 for accuracy and beauty at the present day. 



The world, even the scientific world, dazzled by the 

 brilliancy of those discoveries which we have described, 

 is wont to regard Cavendish as a chemist merely. But 

 it was not only in chemical science and in a few depart- 

 ments of natural philosophy that this great man had 

 thoroughly exercised himself ; he was profoundly versed 

 in every branch of physics, and was a most complete and 

 accomplished mathematician. I have had access to the 

 manuscripts which he left behind him ; and it would 

 be difficult to name any subject which had not engaged 

 his close attention : all had been made the subject not 

 only of his study, but of his original investigations. 

 The two papers on Electricity which he published in 

 the ' Philosophical Transactions ' contain, the one of 

 1776, the first distinct statement of the difference be- 

 tween animal and common electricity ; the other, in 

 1771, twenty-seven propositions upon the action of the 

 electric fluid, treated mathematically. They are 

 grounded upon the general hypothesis that the par- 

 ticles of the fluid repel one another, and attract those 

 of other matter with a force inversely as some lesser 

 power than the cube of the distance ; and with this 

 theory the experiments which he examines are found 

 to tally perfectly. But his voluminous unpublished 

 papers show how constantly his life was devoted to 

 experimental inquiries, and analytical or geometrical 

 investigations. Beside ranging over the whole of che- 

 mical science, they relate to various branches of optics, 



