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REVIEWS. 



when four scientific friends were engaged to dine with him, his 

 housekeeper remonstrated against the invariable bill of fare : that a 

 leg of mutton would not be enough for five. " Well then, get two," 

 was the reply. One can fancy Smithson as one of the five, who, at 

 this homely board, talked over the favourite themes on which they 

 meditated in common ; and speculated, with unimpassioned stoicism, 

 on such laws of the universe as engaged their thoughts. Professor 

 Playfair, who had met with Cavendish at the Eoyal Society Club, de- 

 scribes him as awkward in appearance, speaking very seldom and 

 with great hesitation. " But," he adds, " the gleams of genius break 

 often through this unpromising exterior. He never speaks, but it 

 is exceedingly to the purpose ; and either brings some excellent in- 

 formation, or draws some important conclusion," Smithson, one is 

 tempted to fancy as little less shy and reserved ; though with him 

 some at least of the originating causes were very different. The 

 Honourable Henry Cavendish was of untarnished ducal descent by 

 both parents ; and related by near propinquity to others of the mos't 

 illustrious among England's ancient nobility. Smithson betrays in 

 his will the nature of the wound, which, rankling in his breast,' may 

 have made of him the reserved, silent student of science, fitted by 

 his retiring exelusiveness to be the friend of the misanthropical 

 patrician Chemist, who shrunk from the society of his fellow men ; 

 had little intercourse with his noble relatives ; and is reported by his 

 contemporaries to have had a positive dislike to women. It is pro- 

 bable, however that his biographer is nearer the truth when he sug- 

 gests that he did not hate women, but was only awkwardly shy and 

 afraid of them. 



But Smithson, — who commences his will with the assertion of a 

 ducal descent on both sides, not less noble than that of Cavendish,— 

 in one of the clauses of his will bequeaths the whole of his property 

 to a nephew, the son of his brother, " Lieut. Col. Charles Louis 

 Dickenson." The name adds fresh complication to the question of 

 his family relations: with the "Louis" which he dropped along with 

 the surname of his earlier years, reappearing as the only element 

 common to both. But the significant clause is superadded, that in 

 case of the death of this nephew, the whole property is to go to 

 any children of his, "legitimate or illegitimate." But neither 

 nephew, nor nephew's children, survived to claim the property of 

 the old man. He had at one time, it is said designed making the 

 Eoyal Society the administrator of his wealth ; but his co-fellows 



