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LIFE OF CAVENDISH 



BY THOMAS YOUNG, M.D., F.R.S. 



(From the Supplement to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1816-1824.) 



HENRY CAVENDISH, a great and justly celebrated Chemist, Natural Philosopher, 

 and Astronomer; son of Lord Charles Cavendish, and grandson of William, 

 second Duke of Devonshire; born the zoth of October, 1731, at Nice, where his 

 mother, Lady Anne Grey, daughter of Henry, Duke of Kent, had gone, though 

 ineffectually, for the recovery of her health. 



Of a man, whose rank, among the benefactors of science and of mankind, 

 is so elevated as that of Mr Cavendish, we are anxious to learn all the details 

 both of intellectual cultivation and of moral character that the labours of a 

 biographer can discover and record. Little, however, is known respecting his 

 earliest education : he was for some time at Newcombe's school, an establishment 

 of considerable reputation at Hackney; and he afterwards went to Cambridge: 

 but it is probable that he acquired his taste for experimental investigation in 

 great measure from his father, who was in the habit of amusing himself with 

 meteorological observations and apparatus, and to whom we are indebted for 

 a very accurate determination of the depression of mercury in barometrical 

 tubes, which has been made the basis of some of the most refined investigations 

 of modern times. " It has been observed," says M. Cuvier, "that more persons 

 of rank enter seriously into science and literature in Great Britain than in other 

 countries : and this circumstance may naturally be explained from the constitu- 

 tion of the British Government, which renders it impossible for birth and fortune 

 alone to attain to distinction in the state, without high cultivation of the mind; 

 so that amidst the universal diffusion of solid learning, which is thus rendered 

 indispensable, some individuals are always found who are more disposed to 

 occupy themselves in the pursuit of the eternal truths of nature, and in the 

 contemplation of the finished productions of talent and genius, than in the 

 transitory interests of the politics of the day." Mr Cavendish was neither 

 influenced by the ordinary ambition of becoming a distinguished statesman, 

 nor by a taste for expensive luxuries or sensual gratifications : so that, enjoying 

 a moderate competence during his father's life, and being elevated by his birth 

 above all danger of being despised for want of greater influence, he felt himself 

 exempted from the necessity of applying to any professional studies, of courting 

 the approbation of the public either by the parade of literature or by the habits 

 of conviviality, or of ingratiating himself with mixed society by the display of 

 superficial accomplishments. It is difficult to refrain from imagining that his 

 mind had received some slight impression from the habitual recurrence to the 

 motto of his family: the words cavendo tutus must have occurred perpetually 



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