GEORGE BENTHAM. 457 



any conscious impression upon the reviewer's mind, yet may 

 have fructified afterwards. 



After his uncle's death in 1832, Mr. Bentham gave his undi- 

 vided attention to botany. He became a Fellow of the Lin- 

 naean Society in 1828. Robert Brown soon after presented 

 his name to the Royal Society, but withdrew it before the elec- 

 tion, to mark the dissatisfaction on the part of scientific men 

 with the management of the society when a royal duke was 

 made president. Consequently he did not become F. R. S. 

 until 1862. In 1829, when the Royal Horticultural Society 

 was much embarrassed, he accepted the position of honorary 

 secretary, with his friend Lindley as associate. Under their 

 management it was soon extricated from its perilous condi- 

 tion, attained its highest prosperity and renown, and did its 

 best work for horticulture and botany. In 1833 he married 

 the daughter of Sir Harford Brydges, for many years British 

 ambassador in Persia, and the next year he took up his resi- 

 dence in the house in Queen Square Place, Westminster, inher- 

 ited from his uncle, in which Jeremy Bentham and his own 

 paternal grandfather had dwelt for almost a century. The 

 house no longer exists, but upon its site stands the western wing 

 of the " Queen Anne Mansions." The summer of 1836 was 

 passed in Germany, at points of botanical interest and wher- 

 ever the principal herbaria are preserved, the whole winter in 

 Vienna. Some account of this tour, and interesting memo- 

 randa of the botanists, gardens, and herbaria visited, com- 

 municated in familiar letters to Sir William Hooker, were 

 printed at the time (without the author's name) in the second 

 volume of the " Companion to the Botanical Magazine." 

 Similar visits for botanical investigation, mingled with recrea- 

 tion, were made almost every summer to various parts of the 

 continent ; in one of them he revisited the scenes of his early 

 boyhood in Russia, traveled with Mrs. Bentham to the fair at 

 Nijni-Novgorod, and thence to Odessa, by the rude litter-like 

 conveyances of the country. 



In 1842 he removed with his herbarium to Pontrilas House 

 in Herefordshire, an Elizabethan mansion belonging to his 

 brother-in-law, and combined there the life of a country squire 



