i88o.] 
27 
His Life and Character. 
hidden documents should have been given to the world as 
the last labour of a modern scientist who united in his own 
person the same extended mathematical knowledge and 
power of acute and accurate observation as was possessed 
by the philosopher whose researches he has so ably edited. 
It is also equally fitting that the late Prof. Maxwell should, 
at the time of his death, have been the first Cavendish pro- 
fessor at the laboratory founded at Cambridge by the present 
Duke of Devonshire, in memory and in honour of his illus- 
trious kinsman. 
The Hon. Henry Cavendish was the eldest son of Lord 
Charles Cavendish, third son of the second Duke of Devon- 
shire, whose family can be certainly traced back to the reign 
of Edward III., and with great probability to that of the 
Conqueror. This faCt is worthy of notice seeing that, be- 
sides Robert Boyle, Henry Cavendish was the only scion of 
our English nobility who left his mark on Science. He was 
born at Nice (then in Italy) in 1731, and died at Clapham 
in 1810. Although he had nearly reached eighty years of 
age at the date of his death, we know less of his sayings 
and doings during that long period than we do of those of 
any other modern philosopher of comparable eminence 
during a quarter of that time, and this for a simple but 
sufficient reason that will presently appear. From the few 
particulars that can be gathered about him from his con- 
temporaries — for his own journals, papers, and correspond- 
ence throw little or no light on the matter — Cavendish 
appears to have been the very incarnation of shyness, a 
quality which seems to have imbued his whole life so tho- 
roughly as to easily account for all his oddities and eccen- 
tricities, and to have finally rendered him a perfeCI type of 
a passionless, viceless solitary. The first we hear of him in 
connection with the work-a-day world is in 1755, when, after 
three years’ study, he left Cambridge without taking his 
degree and the honours to which his transcendent abilities 
would have entitled him. This piece of eccentricity is re- 
ferred by some of his biographers to his conscientious 
objection to sign the then necessary religious declarations ; 
but as he never gave the slightest sign of having either a 
conscience or a religion, we think it more consistent to as- 
cribe his flight to his ruling passion, if, indeed, so strong a 
term can with any propriety be applied to so passive a defeCt 
as shyness. 
During the first twenty years after quitting Cambridge he 
appears to have lived at his father’s house in Great Marl- 
borough Street ; but here again all personal particulars are 
