BY G. BROWN GOODE.
“Let the trust of James Smithson to the United States of America be faithfully executed by their representatives in Congress, let the result accomplish his object, ‘the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men,’ and a wreath of more unfading verdure shall entwine itself in the lapse of future ages around the name of Smithson, than the united hands of tradition, history, and poetry have braided around the name of Percy through the long perspective in ages past of a thousand years.”—John Quincy Adams.
The name of the Smithsonian Institution is a household word throughout North America, and its fame is current wherever printed literature exists. Abroad it is regarded as the chief exponent of the scientific activities of the people of the United States, and the administrative scientific department of our government. At home, its actual relations to the administration are better understood, and it is looked upon in its proper capacity—that of an organization closely affiliated to the government and tenderly cherished by its officers, yet, in virtue of its independent foundation, independent of political favor, and ready to encourage, advise and coöperate with any public or private enterprise without the necessity of annual appeals to the congressional committees on appropriations.
Visitors to the national capital usually carry away pleasant memories of the quiet old building among the trees in the mall, with its mediæval battlements and turrets of brown stone conspicuous from every point of view, and the multitude who enter its halls are at least impressed with the fact that the national treasure houses are becoming filled with valuable collections rather faster than the available money and space will allow to be properly arranged and displayed. Only a very few, however, of the four hundred thousand persons who visited the buildings last year can have had the opportunity to inspect the administrative offices or the scientific laboratories, and very few indeed of those who are acquainted with the general nature of the operations of the establishment, have the slightest conception of their meaning and importance.
No class of American people, except indeed our scientific investigators, better understand and appreciate the work of the Institution than do our members of Congress, as is clearly shown by the uniform liberality with which, throughout many successive terms, regardless of changes in the political complexion of the administration, they have supported its policy, by the care with which they disseminate its reports, by the judgment with which they select their representatives in its board of regents, and above all, by the scrupulous care with which they have protected its independence from political complications. Through the disinterested labors of Washington correspondents, novelists, and playwrights, the average congressman of current, popular belief, is not a person remarkable either for manners, honesty or intellect. Residents of Washington, however, do not find the representative men at the Capital counterparts of the eminent politicians depicted by the author of “Democracy,” but in their stead, practical men of business, hard-working in their committees and hard-worked by their constituents. It is its support by these men, and through them by the people of the United States, that has enabled the Smithsonian Institution to do its work in the past. It is to such support that it will owe its efficiency in the future, and it seems right that every opportunity should be taken to explain its operations to the public. Representatives of the best classes of thinking Americans will no doubt thoroughly appreciate the benefits which education has received and will continue to receive from the proper administration of the Smithsonian bequest.
The story of the foundation of the Institution sounds more like a romance than like fact. Its history seems like the fulfillment of some ancient prophecy—even more strikingly so because it is evident that the future is to fulfill the promise of the past. The father of the founder of the Smithsonian Institution was one of the most distinguished members of the English peerage. Upon the plate of his coffin in Westminster Abbey, where he was buried “in great pomp” in 1786, he is described as “the most high, puissant and most noble prince Hugh Percy, Duke and Earl of Northumberland, Earl Percy, Baron Warkworth and Lovaine, Lord Lieutenant and Custos Rotulorum of the Counties of Middlesex and Northumberland, Vice Admiral of the County of Northumberland and of all America, one of the Lords of His Majesty’s most Honorable Privy Council and Knight of the most noble Order of the Garter, etc., etc.” While his aged father was sustaining this overwhelming accumulation of dignities, and while his elder brother, Earl Percy, was acting as Lieutenant-General in the war against the rebellious British colonies in North America (he commanded the reinforcements at the battle of Lexington in 1775, and led the column that reduced Fort Washington, near New York in 1776), James Smithson, a youth of modest fortune, inherited from his mother, was laying the foundations of a scientific education in the English schools and colleges, receiving the degree of Master of Arts at Pembroke College, Oxford, in 1786, the year of his father’s death. He was then known as James Louis Macie, Esq., and did not assume the name of Smithson until fourteen years later, after he had attained to some reputation as a man of science. His mother was not the Duchess of Northumberland, but a cousin of her father’s, Elizabeth Hungerford, who was subsequently known as Mrs. Macie. She appears to have been the daughter and heiress of Sir George Hungerford of Audley and the Hon. Frances Seymour, sister of the Duke of Somerset and aunt of Algernon Seymour, Lord Percy, by marriage with whose daughter Sir Hugh Smithson was enabled to assume the name of Percy and the title of Duke of Northumberland. The Smithsons were an old Yorkshire family, Sir Hugh Smithson, the great-grandfather of James Smithson, having been created baronet in 1660 by Charles II. after his restoration. The names of Percy and Northumberland were, as has been stated, assumed by James Smithson’s father. These barren, genealogical details are referred to because they seem to be necessary to the understanding of James Smithson’s career.
Proud of his descent he undoubtedly was. In his will he describes his identity himself in these words: “I, James Smithson, son of Hugh, first Duke of Northumberland and Elizabeth, heiress of the Hungerfords of Audley, and niece to Charles the Proud, Duke of Somerset.” He was, however, a man of broad, philosophic mind, in whom a thorough training in the best scientific methods of his day, and associations with leading investigators in Germany and France, and his brother Fellows of the Royal Society of London, had developed a generous appreciation of the value of scholarship and scientific culture.
In one of his manuscripts was found the following sentiment, which I have already referred to as prophetic in its ring:
“The best blood of England flows in my veins; on my father’s side I am a Northumberland, on my mother’s I am related to kings, but this avails me not. My name shall live in the memory of man when the titles of the Northumberlands and the Percys are extinct and forgotten.”