A SINGULAR PHILOSOPHER.

Hon. Henry Cavendish was born in England, Oct. 10, 1731, and died Feb. 21, 1810. Cavendish was the son of Lord Charles Cavendish, a son of the Duke of Devonshire; and his mother was Lady Anne Grey, daughter of Henry, Duke of Kent. It is thus seen that the subject of this sketch belonged to two of the two most aristocratic, noble families in England, having for grandfathers the Dukes of Kent and Devonshire. This man, who became one of the most distinguished chemists and physicists of the age, born in high life, of exalted position and wealth, passed through the period of his boyhood and early manhood in utter obscurity, and a dense cloud rests upon his early life. Indeed, the place of his birth has been in dispute; some of his biographers asserting that he was born in England, others that he was born in France or Italy. It is now known that he was born at Nice, whither his mother had gone for the sake of health.

It seems incredible that one highly distinguished, who lived and died so recently, should have almost entirely escaped observation until he had reached middle life. From fragments of his early history which have been collected, we learn that he was a peculiar boy,—shy, reticent, fond of solitary walks, without playfellows, and utterly insensible to the attractions of home and social life. He was born with inflexible reserve; and the love of retirement so manifest in in later life mastered all his instincts even when a boy. If he had been of poor and obscure parentage, it would not seem so strange that one who for nearly fifty years was a Fellow of the Royal Society, and for a lengthened period a member of the Institute of France, and an object of European interest to men of science, had no one to record the incidents of his early life. But he lost his mother when almost an infant, and this sad event probably influenced greatly his early career, and isolated him from the world in which he lived.

We find him at Dr. Newcome's school at Hackney in 1742, and from this school he went directly to Cambridge, where he remained until 1753. He did not graduate, true to his odd instincts, although he spent the full period for a degree at Cambridge. No records of his college life have been preserved, and, as he went to London, it is wonderful that the next ten years of his life remain a blank. He joined the Royal Society in 1760, but contributed nothing until 1766, when he published his first paper on "Factitious Airs." Cavendish was a great mathematician, electrician, astronomer, meteorologist, and as a chemist he was equally learned and original. He lived at a time when science was to a large extent but blank empiricism; even the philosophy of combustion was based on erroneous and absurd hypotheses, and the speculation of experimenters were wild and fantastic. He was the first to submit these speculations to crucial tests, to careful and accurate experiment; and the results which were given to the world introduced a new era in scientific knowledge. We have so much to say regarding the man, that we can only present a brief outline of his great discoveries. Alone, in a spacious house on Clapham Common, outside of London, did this singular man work through many long years, until he filled it with every possible device capable of unfolding or illustrating principles in science.

At the time of a visit to London in 1856 this famous house was standing, and remained as it was when the owner left it, about a half century before. The exterior of the house would not attract special attention; but within, the whole world could not, perhaps, furnish a parallel. Anvils and forges, files and hammers, grindstones and tempering-troughs, furnaces and huge bellows, had converted the panelled and wall-frescoed drawing-room into the shop of a blacksmith. In the spacious dining-room chemical apparatus occupied the place of furniture. Electrical machines, Leyden-jars, eudiometers, thermometric scales, philosophical instruments, were distributed through the chambers. The third story, save two bed-chambers,—one for the housekeeper, the other for the footman,—had been fitted up for an observatory. The lenses and achromatic glasses, tubes and specula, concave mirrors, and object-prisms, and the huge, rough old telescope, peering through the roof, were still there as their owner had left them. All appliances of housekeeping were absent, and Cavendish House was destitute of all comforts, for which the owner had no taste.

In this house Cavendish lived for nearly half a century, totally isolated from the world and all human sympathies. He seldom or never visited relatives, and they were never guests at his house. He had several servants, all of whom were males, with one exception. He was shy of women, and did not like to have them come in his way. If he saw his female servant in any of the rooms, he would order her away instantly, or fly himself to other quarters. Rarely, during all the years of his solitary life, did a woman cross his threshold; and, when one did, he would run from her as if she brought the plague. His servants were all trained to silence, and in giving his orders the fewest words possible were used. His meals were served irregularly, whenever in the intervals of absorbing labors, he could snatch a fragment of time. He uniformly dined upon one kind of meat,—a joint of mutton; and he seemed to have no knowledge that there were other kinds in the market.

Upon one occasion he had invited a few scientific friends to dinner at Cavendish House, and when his servant asked him what he should provide, "A leg of mutton!" said Cavendish. "It will hardly be enough," said the servant. "Well, then get two." "Anything else, sir?" "Yes, get four legs of mutton."

His dress was peculiar,—a snuff-colored coat reaching to his knees, a long vest of the same color, buff breeches, and a three-cornered hat. With him the fashion never changed; he had but one suit; not an extra coat, hat, or even two handkerchiefs. When his wardrobe gave out, and he was forced to see his tailor, he became very nervous. He would walk the room in agony, give orders to have the tailor sent for, and then immediately countermand the same. His shoes for fifty years were of one pattern; and when he took them off they were put in one place behind a door, and woe to the servant who accidentally displaced them. He hung his old three-cornered hat on one peg at his house, and when he attended the meetings of the Royal Society he had a peg in the hall known as "Cavendish's peg." If, through accident, it was taken by some member before his arrival, he would stop, look at the occupied peg, and then turn on his heel, and go back to his house. When he went to the meetings, he walked in the middle of the street, never on the sidewalk; and he invariably took the same route. Upon reaching the steps leading to the rooms, he would stop, hesitate, put his hand on the door-handle, and look about timidly, and sometimes return at a rapid pace.

His cane, which he carried for fifty years, he placed upright in his left boot, which he took off at the door, covering his foot with a slipper. Once inside the rooms of the Royal Society, and surrounded by the most distinguished men of England and the world, he became excessively shy, and read his wonderful papers in an awkward manner. Applause of any kind he could not bear; and if in conversation any one praised his researches or papers, he would turn away abruptly, as if highly indignant. If he was appealed to as authority upon any point, he would dart away, and perhaps quit the hall for the evening. This man of great genius and vast acquirements was incapable of understanding or enduring praise or flattery. He sought in every possible way to escape recognition or notice, listened attentively to conversation, but seldom asked questions; never spoke of himself, or of what he had accomplished in the world of science.

Cavendish was a man possessed of vast wealth, and, when he died, he was the richest bank-owner in all England.

"At the age of forty, a large accession came to his fortune. His income already exceeded his expenditure. Pecuniary transactions were his aversion. Other matters occupied his attention. The legacy was therefore paid in to his bankers. It was safe there, and he gave it no more heed. One of the firm sought to see him at Clapham. In answer to the inquiries of the footman as to his Business, the banker replied to see Mr. Cavendish personally. 'You must wait, then,' responded the servant, 'till he rings his bell.' The banker tarried for hours, when the long-expected bell rang. His name was announced. 'What does he want?' the master was heard to ask. 'A personal interview.' 'Send him up.' The banker appeared.

"'I am come, sir, to ascertain your views concerning a sum of two hundred thousand pounds placed to your account.'

"'Does it inconvenience you?' asked the philosopher. 'If so, transfer it elsewhere.'

"'Inconvenience, sir? By no means,' replied the banker. 'But pardon me for suggesting that it is too large a sum to remain unproductive. Would you not like to invest it?'

"'Invest it? Eh? Yes, if you will. Do as you like, but don't interrupt me about such things again. I have other matters to think about.'"

With all his wealth it never occurred to him that others were in need, and that he might do good by benefactions. Solicited on one occasion to contribute to a charitable object, he exclaimed, "Give, eh! What do you want? How much?" "Give whatever you please, sir," said the solicitor. "Well, then, will ten thousand pounds do?"

On another occasion he was forced, from circumstances, to attend a christening in a church; and, when it was intimated to him that it was customary to bestow some little present upon the attending nurse, he ran up to her, and poured into her lap a double handful of gold coins, and hastily departed. This was the only occasion on which he was known to cross the threshold of a church. Cavendish died possessed of five million dollars of property, and yet at no time had he the slightest knowledge of how much he had, and how it was invested. He despised money, and made as little use of it as possible.

As regards matters of religion, he never troubled himself about them. He would never talk upon the subject, and probably never gave it a thought. All days of the week were alike to him: he was as busy on Sunday as on any other day. When asked by a friend what his views were of God, he replied, "Don't ask me such questions: I never think of them."

The circumstances of Cavendish's death are as remarkable as his career in life.

"Without premitory disease or sickness, or withdrawal from daily duties, or decadence of mental powers, or physical disability, he made up his mind that he was about to die. Closing his telescopes, putting his achromatic glasses in their several grooves, locking the doors of his laboratories, destroying the papers he deemed useless, and arranging those corrected for publication, he ascended to his sleeping-apartment and rang his bell. A servant appeared.

"'Edgar,' said Cavendish, addressing him by name, 'listen! Have I ever commanded you to do an unreasonable thing?'

"The man heard the question without astonishment, for he knew his master's eccentricities, and replied in the negative.

"'And that being the case,' continued the old man, 'I believe I have a right to be obeyed.'

"The domestic bowed his assent.

"'I shall now give you my last command,' Cavendish went on to say, 'I am going to die. I shall, upon your departure, lock my room. Here let me be alone for eight hours. Tell no one. Let no person come near. When the time has passed, come and see if I am dead. If so, let Lord George Cavendish know. This is my last command. Now, go.'

"The servant knew from long experience that to dispute his master's will would be useless. He bowed, therefore, and turned to go away.

"'Stay—one word!' added Cavendish. 'Repeat exactly the order I have given.'

"Edgar repeated the order, promised obedience once more, and retired from the chamber."

The servant did not keep his promise, but called to his master's bedside Sir Everard Home, a distinguished physician.

"Sir Everard inquired if he felt ill.

"'I am not ill,' replied Cavendish; 'but I am about to die. Don't you think a man of eighty has lived long enough? Why am I disturbed? I had matters to arrange. Give me a glass of water.'

"The glass of water was handed to him; he drank it, turned on his back, closed his eyes, and died.

"This end of a great man, improbable as are some of the incidents narrated, is no fiction of imagination. Sir Everard Home's statement, read before the Royal Institution, corroborates every particular. The mental constitution of the philosopher, puzzling enough during his life, was shrouded certainly in even greater mystery in his death."

It is as a chemist that Cavendish stands preeminent. Without instructors, without companionship, in the solitary rooms of his dwelling, he meditated and experimented. The result of his researches he communicated in papers read to the Royal Society, and these are quite numerous. He was the first to demonstrate the nature of atmospheric air and also of water. He was the discoverer of nitrogen and several gaseous bodies. He did much to overthrow the phlogiston theory, which was universally accepted in his time; and his researches upon arsenic were of the highest importance. There is scarcely any department of chemistry which he did not enrich by his discoveries. He was a close student of electrical phenomena, and made many discoveries in this department of research. He was also an astronomer and observed the heavens with his telescopes with the deepest interest. Some of his most important discoveries were unknown until after his death, as they were hidden in papers, which, for some reason, he would not publish.

The life of this singular man was morally a blank, and can only be described by negations. He did not love; he did not hate; he did not hope; he did not worship. He separated himself from his fellow-men and from his God. There was nothing earnest, enthusiastic, heroic, in his nature, and as little that was mean, groveling, or ignoble. He was passionless, wholly destitute of emotion. Everything that required the exercise of fancy, imagination, faith, or affection, was distasteful to Cavendish. He had a clear head for thinking, a pair of eyes for observing, hands for experimenting and recording, and these were all. His brain was a calculating engine; his eyes, inlets of vision, not fountains of tears; his heart, an anatomical organ necessary for the circulation of the blood. If such a man can not be loved, he can not be abhorred or despised. He was as the Almighty made him, and he served an important end in the world.

Such a man manifestly would never sit for his portrait. And he never did. It was taken by Borrow the painter, unobserved by Cavendish, while at a dinner-party given for the express purpose of securing the likeness. It is now in the British Museum. Cuts of this painting are rare.—Popular Science News.

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