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.
A