James Smithson 3 



scarcely need to read between the lines to see the genesis of 

 the institution which perpetuates the name he bore, in place 

 of the titled one he was denied. 



It will be observed from facts given later that it was only 

 under circumstances which showed that he had -no right to 

 the name of Macie (which seems to have been first imposed 

 upon him under circumstances which left him free to change 

 it) that he in later life had that of Smithson, to which he had 

 every moral right, legally confirmed to him. After pointing 

 out that the change was obtained under circumstances which 

 do him no discredit, we are chiefly concerned with this sense 

 of the injustice under which he labored from its after results; 

 for if the kind of pride which dictated the first sentence I 

 have above quoted be one which, from the point of view of 

 the present day, attracts little sympathy, we can feel more 

 with the worthier spirit which resulted from it, and in which 

 he wrote the second. We are in no ways concerned with the 

 ancestral honors or titles of the Percys, as such; but if there 

 be anything in heredity, we may supplement our limited 

 knowledge of him by some consideration of that very remark- 

 able man, the first Duke of Northumberland, whose child 

 Smithson declared himself to be, and undoubtedly was; for 

 the father was remarkable, not in having been born great, 

 but in having achieved greatness, at least a greatness of 

 that sort which his less fortunate son must always have 

 envied him. 



Hugh Smithson, the father of the founder of the Smithso- 

 nian Institution, was the son of Langdale Smithson, who, ac- 

 cording to another unverified tradition, occupied for a time the 

 then relatively unconsidered position of a medical practitioner. 

 The Smithsons, however, were an old family, which was, in 

 fact, remotely connected by lineage with the Percys. As 

 country gentlemen they were reared in the habit of person- 



