452 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 



which he attained the post of Inspector-General of Naval 

 Works. Among the services he rendered was that of bring- 

 ing to England the distinguished engineer Isambard Mark 

 Brunei. In the year 1805, General Bentham was sent by the 

 Admiralty to St. Petersburg, to superintend the building in 

 Russia of vessels for the British navy. He took his family 

 with him ; and there began the education of George Bentham, 

 in the fifth year of his age, under the charge of a Russian 

 lady who could speak no English, where he learned to con- 

 verse fluently in Russian, French, and German, besides ac- 

 quiring the rudiments of Latin as taught by a Russian priest. 

 On the way back to England, two or three years later, the 

 detention of a month or two in Sweden gave opportunity for 

 learning enough of Swedish to converse in that language and 

 to read it with tolerable ease in after life. Returning to 

 England, the family settled at Hampstead, and the children 

 pursued their studies under private tutors. In the years 

 1812-13, during the excitement produced by the French in- 

 vasion of Russia and the burning of Moscow, our young poly- 

 glot " budded into an author, by translating (along with his 

 brother and sister) and contributing to a London magazine a 

 series of articles from the Russian newspapers, detailing the 

 operations of the armies." In 1814, upon the downfall of 

 Napoleon, the Bentham family crossed over to France, pre- 

 pared for a long stay, remained in the country (at Tours, 

 Saumur, and Paris) during the hundred days preceding 

 Napoleon's final overthrow, and in 1816 Sir Samuel Bent- 

 ham set out upon a prolonged and singular family tour, en 

 caravane, through the western and southern departments of 

 France. To quote from the published account from which 

 most of these biographical details are drawn, and which were 

 taken from Mr. Bentham's own memoranda 1 — 



" The cortege consisted of a two-horse coach fitted up as a 

 sleeping apartment ; a long, low, two-wheeled, one-horse spring 

 van for General and Mrs. Bentham, furnished with a library 

 and piano ; and another, also furnished, for his daughters and 

 their governess. The plan followed was to travel by day 

 1 An article in "Nature," Oct. 2, 1884, by Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker. 



