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took place, less than two years thereafter, he was again a wanderer, 

 "with so uncertain an abiding place at the close of his life, that the 

 biographical notice in the Gentleman's Magazine states him to have 

 died in the south of Erance, while a notice attached to the Chiide to 

 the Smithsonian Institution and National Museum, assigns GeiKia 

 as the place of his decease. 



Smithson, as the friend of Cavendish, was — as may be presumed, 

 not without some support from the imperfect glimpses we thus re- 

 cover of him, — one to whom intimate intercourse with society at 

 large was far from acceptable. But in another, and more interesting 

 respect, he bore some resemblance to the great English chemist. 

 He was singularly delicate in his scientific operations ; and among 

 his personal efiects, deposited in the Eegents' Hall, at Washington, 

 are the miniature apparatus and laboratory with which he was wont 

 to pursue his experiments as an analytic chemist while travelling 

 either at home or abroad. He was referred to by Mr. Davies Gil- 

 bert, when noticing the blanks which death had made, by the re- 

 moval of him and other recently deceased Pellows of the Eoyal 

 Society, in the last address delivered by him from its presidential 

 chair ; and he then spoke of him as one unsurpassed in ezpertness 

 and analytic skill among contemporary chemists. In illustration of. 

 his *' elegant analyses," one romantic incident is referred to as proof 

 of his skill. Happening, it is said, to observe a tear gliding down a 

 fair lady's cheek, he started forward to catch it in a crystal vessel, 

 ere it fell. Half of the falling tear escaped ; but what remained 

 was submitted by him to minute analysis, and enabled him to deter- 

 mine the nature of its included salts. 



In the case of Cavendish, the sight of a strange face, even at the 

 Eoyal Society Club, where he appears to have been most at his ease, 

 was sufficient to strike him dumb. Such was his excessive shyness, 

 that one of his contemporaries describes him as standing on the 

 landing, at Sir Joseph Banks' presidential soire'es, evidently wanting 

 courage to open the door and face the assembled Fellows ; and only 

 entering at last, when the sound of footsteps behind compelled him 

 to avoid the approaching company by escaping into the crowd. 

 Shrinking as he thus did from the society of his own sex, it would 

 be curious and interesting to ascertain to what extent the statement 

 of Smithson's intimate friendship with him, which rests on authority 

 so worthy of credit, is actually borne out by any existing evidence % 

 and, if so, how far it was traceable to similarity in disposition and 



