James Smithson n 



of Master of Arts, on May 26, 1786, as James Lewis Macie, 

 and admitted as a Fellow of the Royal Society on April 26, 

 1787, on the following recommendation: 



"James Lewis Macie, Esq., M.A., late of Pembroke College, 

 Oxford, and now of John Street, Golden Square, a gentle- 

 man well versed in various branches of Natural Philosophy, 

 and particularly in Chymistry and Mineralogy, being desirous 

 of becoming a Fellow of the Royal Society, we whose names 

 are hereunto subscribed do, from our personal knowledge of 

 his merit, judge him highly worthy of that honour and likely 

 to become a very useful and valuable Member. 



RICHARD KIRWAN, 

 C. F. GREVILLE, 

 C. BLAGDEN, 

 H. CAVENDISH, 

 DAVID PITCAIRN." 



Cavendish, whose name appears here, was the eminent 

 physicist, and, as we learn elsewhere, was an intimate friend. 



Smithson's lodgings were for some time in Bentinck Street, 

 where Gibbon wrote much of his "Decline and Fall of the 

 Roman Empire." Here he apparently prepared his first 

 scientific paper, which was signed James Lewis Macie, and 

 was read on July 7, 1791, before the Royal Society. It 

 is entitled " An Account of Some Chemical Experiments on 

 Tabasheer." 1 We learn of him incidentally in 1792 as jour- 

 neying from Geneva to Italy through the Tyrol, and find him 

 in the same year in Paris writing from the Hotel du Pare 

 Royal, Rue de Colombier, a letter in which he expresses 

 sentiments which represented what would have been then 

 called advanced Jacobinism. "fa ira" he says, "is grow- 

 ing the song of England, of Europe, as well as of France. 



1 Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Volume LXXXI, part II, page 368. 



