444 1-tf e f Cavendish 



but none of them attempted to employ their powers of investigation in the pur- 

 suit of physical discovery: Euler and Lagrange, on the Continent, had carried 

 the improvements of analytical reasoning to an unparalleled extent, and they 

 both, as well as Daniel Bernoulli and d'Alembert, applied these powers with 

 marked success to the solution of a great variety of problems in mechanics and 

 in astronomy; but they made no experimental discoveries of importance: and 

 the splendid career of chemical investigation, which has since been pursued 

 with a degree of success so unprecedented in history, may be said to have been 

 first laid open to mankind by the labours of Mr Cavendish ; although the further 

 discoveries of Priestley, Scheele, and Lavoisier, soon furnished, in rapid suc- 

 cession, a superstructure commensurate to the extent of the foundations so 

 happily laid. "Whatever the sciences revealed to Mr Cavendish," says Cuvier, 

 "appeared always to exhibit something of the sublime and the marvellous; he 

 weighed the earth; he rendered the air navigable; he deprived water of the 

 quality of an element"; and he denied to fire the character of a substance. 

 "The clearness of the evidence on which he established his discoveries, so new 

 and so unexpected as they were, is still more astonishing than the facts them- 

 selves which he detected; and the works, in which he has made them public, 

 are so many master-pieces of sagacity and of methodical reasoning ; each perfect 

 as a whole and in its parts, and leaving nothing for any other hand to correct, 

 but rising in splendour with each successive year that passes over them, and 

 promising to carry down his name to a posterity far more remote than his rank 

 and connections could ever have enabled him to attain without them." 



In his manners Mr Cavendish had the appearance of a quickness and 

 sensibility almost morbid, united to a slight hesitation in his speech, which 

 seems to have depended more on the constitution of his mind than on any 

 deficiency of his organic powers, and to an air of timidity and reserve, which 

 sometimes afforded a contrast, almost ludicrous, to the sentiments of profound 

 respect which were professed by those with whom he conversed. It is not 

 impossible that he may have been indebted to his love of severe study, not only 

 for the decided superiority of his faculties to those of the generality of man- 

 kind, but even for his exemption from absolute eccentricity of character. His 

 person was tall, and rather thin: his dress was singularly uniform, although 

 sometimes a little neglected. His pursuits were seldom interrupted by in- 

 disposition; but he suffered occasionally from calculous complaints. His retired 

 habits of life, and his disregard of popular opinion, appear to have lessened the 

 notoriety which might otherwise have attached to his multiplied successes in 

 science; but his merits were more generally understood on the Continent than 

 in this country; although it was not till he had passed the age of seventy, that 

 he was made one of the eight Foreign Associates of the Institute of France. 



Mr Cavendish was no less remarkable in the latter part of his life, for the 

 immense accumulation of his pecuniary property, than for his intellectual and 

 scientific treasures. His father died in 1783, being at that time eighty years 

 old, and the senior member of the Royal Society: but he is said to have suc- 

 'ceeded at an earlier period to a considerable inheritance left him by one of his 





