54Q 



NA TURE 



{Oct. 2, ii 



improving the civil branch of our naval system. This he 

 accepted, resigning the Russian service, and attained the 

 post of Inspector-General of Naval Works. His son has 

 been heard to say that amongst other improvements 

 introduced by Gen. Bentham into the dockyard were the 

 steam sawmills and the machinery for the eccentric turn- 

 ing of blocks, through his employment of the late 

 Isambard Mark Brunei, whom he brought over to 

 England. 



In 1796 Gen. Bentham married the eldest daughter 

 of Dr. George Fordyce, F.R.S., the well-known physician 

 and author. Mrs. Bentham was a woman of great ability 

 and energy ; she had actively aided her father in the pre- 

 paration of his works, and with still greater perseverance 

 she devoted herself to assisting her hu ^band in his arduous 

 labours, drawing up as well ;is writing out his voluminous 

 reports to the Admiralty, and accompanying him on his 

 visits of inspection to the dockyard , which were often of 

 several months' duration. Up to the age of eighty she 

 wrote a most beautiful hand, and it is within the recollec- 

 tion of readers of this article that letters in the Times, 

 under her signature, when she was considerably over 

 ninety years of age, appeared during the Crimean War, 

 urging the introduction of improvements in our war ma- 

 terial, especially great guns, which her late husband had 

 suggested. 



It was during one of the annual inspections of the 

 Portsmouth Dockyard that George was born, at Stoke, 

 then a village near Portsmouth, and now absorbed in that 

 town. He was the second son, and had three sisters, one 

 of them older than himself. AH were forward children: 

 011 their fourth birthdays the two elder sisters made the 

 clothes they wore on those days and wrote out a list of 

 their possessions ; and before he was five years old, 

 George wrote copies, enjoyed reading Miss Edgeworth's 

 " Easy Lessons " with his brother, and began to study 

 Latin. The whole family were taught reading by the 

 words, not letters or syllables. 



In 1805 Gen. Bentham was sent by the Admiralty on 

 a mission to St. Petersburg, having for its object the 

 building in Russia of ships for our navy, and he took his 

 family with him. There they remained for two years, 

 during which time the education of the children was 

 intrusted to a talented Russian lady, who could speak no 

 English ; and the young people, showing a remarkable- 

 facility for the acquisition of languages, were able before 

 leaving to converse fluently in Russian, French, and 

 German. Latin was acquired under a Russian priest, 

 and, at six years of age, music, to which George subse- 

 quently became passionately attached, was commenced. 



War between England and Russia breaking out in 

 1807, Gen. Bentham was recalled. The homeward route 

 was by Revel and Sweden, and the voyages were 

 notable. At Revel they embarked for Stockholm in a 

 Russian frigate, a bad sailer, with a crew hardly any of 

 whom had before been at sea ; and, after driving back- 

 wards and forwards in the Baltic under continuous gales, 

 they landed on the fourteenth day at Carlscrona ! In 

 Sweden they were detained several weeks, long enough for 

 the two brothers and their elder sister, by dint of perse- 

 verance and hard study, to learn enough of Swedish to 

 converse in that language and read it with tolerable ease. 

 From Gothenburg they sailed for Harwich in a wretched 

 craft, and, after beating about the North Sea in a succes- 

 sion of tempests, arrived on the fourteenth night, when 

 the crew took the boats and hastened ashore, leaving the 

 Benthams till the following midday with no other food 

 but rejected bits of biscuit picked up wherever they could 

 be found. 



In England the family settled at Hampstead, whence the 

 father went daily to his offices at the Admiralty and 

 Somerset House, whilst George and his brother pursued 

 their studies. These, then and ever afterwards, were con- 

 ducted by private tutors, and it was a life-long source of 



regret to George that he had never been at school or 

 college. This, in his opinion (and not his alone), accounted 

 for an habitual shyness and reserve that often caused 

 him to be misunderstood, and credited with motives or 

 sentiments that were foreign to his disposition and cha- 

 racter. Much of his time was spent at Berry Lodge, a 

 house and property which his father had bought between 

 Gosport and Alverstoke, where the summer months 

 were passed, and which still belongs to the family. It 

 was from here that he was once taken by his father on a 

 visit to Lady Spencer at Ryde, and met at her house 

 John Stuart Mill — then on a visit there — a boy of six, in 

 a scarlet jacket and nankeen trousers buttoned over it, 

 and who was then considered a prodigy. Bentham has 

 described him as wonderfully precocious, a Greek and 

 Latin scholar, historian, and logician, fond of showing off, 

 and discussing with Lady Spencer the relative merits of 

 her ancestor the Duke of Marlborough and the Duke of 

 Wellington, he taking the part of the latter. 



The year 1814 opened upon a period of great excite- 

 ment throughout the Continent ; the invasion of Russia 

 by Napoleon and the burning of Moscow were naturally 

 matters of intense interest to the Bentham family. The 

 boy George, then only thirteen, now budded into an 

 author, commencing with his brother and sister the trans- 

 lation of a series of articles from a Russian paper, de- 

 tailing the operations of the armies, which were contri- 

 buted to a London magazine of ephemeral duration. He 

 gloried in the reverses and final abdication of Napoleon, 

 and was presented to the Emperor of Russia by his father 

 on the visit of that monarch to the naval establishment at 

 Portsmouth. 



Peace b-ing proclaimed, the Bentham family went to 

 France, and prepared for a long residence in that country ; 

 they resided first at Tours, then at Saumur and Paris, 

 during the eventful period that extended from the return 

 of Napoleon to his final overthrow. Young Bentham 

 kept full journals of all that passed, interspersed with 

 anecdotes relating to the forced exile of Louis, the defeat 

 of the Emperor,the restoration of the Bourbons, the conduct 

 of the allies, the execution of Ney and Labedoyere, the 

 condition of the city of Paris, and the prominent part 

 taken in the politics of the day by Walter Savage Landor, 

 who was intimate with his family. Moreover, he seems to 

 have been able at this early age to enjoy and even take his 

 part in the society of the eminent men of the time and the 

 salons of the leaders in literature and science, the Due de 

 Richelieu, Talleyrand, the Comte de Damas, Jean Baptiste 

 Say, the aged Mine. Andelan (the daughter of Helve'tius), 

 were amongst the intimate friends of the family ; as was 

 Baron Humboldt, who took warmly to the lad, encour- 

 aging especially his taste for geographical science, giving 

 him introductions to libraries and to individuals who could 

 aid him in the preparation of a work which he had begun 

 on the data of physical geography. 



In 1816 Gen. Bentham organised what may be called a 

 caravan tour of France for himself and family, having for 

 its objects partly unceremonious visits to his many friends 

 in the provinces, and partly the leisurely inspection of the 

 great towns and other objects of interest. The cortege 

 consisted of a two-horse coach fitted up as a sleeping- 

 apartment, a long, two-wheeled, one-horse spring van for 

 himself 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 

 from one place of interest to another, bivouacking at night 

 by the road, or in the garden of a friend, or in the precincts 

 of the prefectures, to which latter he had credentials from 

 the authorities in the capital. In this way he visited 

 Orleans, Tours, Angouleme, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Mont- 

 pellier, and finally Montauban, where a lengthened stay- 

 was made in a country-house hired for the purpose. 

 From Montauban (the co?-tege having broken down in 

 some way) they proceeded, still by private conveyances, to 



