THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION. 123 



oiBended his touchy, sensitive nature in some way ; and after pro- 

 viding a small annuity for John Fitall a faithful old servant, and 

 extending the terms of a loan to H. H. Sailly, also formerly in his 

 service, but who is described as " now keeping the Hungerford 

 Hotel in Paris ;" he transferred the whole of his estate "to the United 

 States, for the purpose of founding an Institution for the increase 

 and diffusion of knowledge among men." The name adopted by 

 Smithson's former servant for his Parisian hotel is, in all likelihood, 

 another index of the sensitive assertion by his master of descent 

 from the noble heiress of the Hungerfords of Audley, and so 

 designed to gratify him by an acceptable humouring of his known 

 weakness on this point. 



"Without domestic ties, and frequently apparently without any 

 fixed home in England, he appears to have travelled on the conti- 

 nent, staying once and again a year or two in Paris, Berlin, Elorence, 

 &c., and spending his later years chiefly abroad. Occasional 

 glimpses of his wanderings are still recoverable from his scientific 

 memoirs ; as when in communicating to the Eoyal Society, in 1813, 

 some analytic experiments on a substance from Mount Vesuvius, he 

 remarks : " The present saline substance was sent to me from 

 iN'apies to Elorence, where I was, in May, 1794." 



Smithson's last communication to the Eoyal Society was made in 

 1818, and is entitled " A few facts relative to the colouring matter 

 of some vegetables ; " but reference to this paper shows that be 

 bad then abandoned all active labour as an experimental physicist. 

 "I began," he says, "a great many years ago, some researches on 

 the colouring matters of vegetables. Erom the inquiry being to bo 

 prosecuted only at a particular season of the year, the great delicacy 

 of the experiments, and the great care required in them, and conse- 

 quently the trouble with which they were attended, very little was 

 done. I have now no idea of pursuing the subject. In destroying 

 lately the memorandums of the experiments which haye been made, 

 at few scattered facts were met witb which seemed deserving of being 

 preserved. They are here offered, in hopes that they will induce 

 some other person to give extension to an investigation interesting 

 to chemistry, and to the art of dying;" and so, apparently,- closes 

 the scientific labours of Smithson. He was probably then destroy- 

 ing papers, preparatory to one of his long sojourns in other lands. 

 The date of his will, 23rd October, 1826, shows him in London, 

 resident in Bentinck Street, Cavendish Square ; but when his death 



