Mr. Smithson, says Professor Simon Newcomb, "is not known to have had the personal acquaintance of an American, and his tastes were supposed to have been aristocratic rather than democratic. We thus have the curious spectacle of a retired English gentleman bequeathing the whole of his large fortune to our Government, to found an establishment which was described in ten words, without a memorandum of any kind by which his intentions could be divined, or the recipient of the gift guided in applying it."
Mr. Smithson died June 27, 1829, in Genoa, Italy, at the age of sixty-four. His nephew survived him only six years, dying unmarried at Pisa, Italy, June 5, 1835. He used the income from his uncle's estate while he lived, and upon his death it passed to the United States. Hungerford's mother, who had married a Frenchman, Madame Théodore de la Batut, claimed a life-interest in the estate of Smithson, which was granted till her death in 1861. To meet this annuity $26,210 was retained in England until she died.
For several years it was difficult to decide in what way Congress should use the money "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men." John Quincy Adams desired a great astronomical observatory; Rufus Choate of Massachusetts urged a grand library; a senator from Ohio wished a botanical garden; another person a college for women; another a school for indigent children of the District of Columbia; still another a great agricultural school.
After seven years of indecision and discussion the Smithsonian Institution was organized by act of Congress, Aug. 10, 1846, which provided for a suitable building to contain objects of natural history, a chemical laboratory, a library, gallery of art, and geological and mineralogical collections. The minerals, books, and other property of James Smithson, were to be preserved in the Institution.
Professor Joseph Henry, whose interesting life I have sketched in my "Famous Men of Science," was called to the headship of the new Institution. For thirty-three years he devoted his life to make Smithson's gift a blessing to the world and an honor to the name of the generous giver. The present secretary is the well-known Professor Samuel P. Langley.
The library was after a time transferred to the Library of Congress, the art department to the Corcoran Art Gallery, and the Smithsonian Institution began to do its specific work of helping men to make original scientific research, to aid in explorations, and to send scientific publications all over the world. Its first publication was a work on the mounds and earthworks found in the Mississippi Valley. Much time has also been given to the study of the character and pursuits of the earliest races on this continent.
The Smithsonian Institution now owns two large buildings, one completed in 1855, costing about $314,000, and the great National Museum, which Congress helped to build. This building has a floor space of 100,000 square feet, and contains over three and one-half million specimens of birds, fishes, Oriental antiquities, minerals, fossils, etc. So much of value has been gathered by government surveys, as well as by contributions from other nations by way of exchange, that halls twice as large as those now built could be filled by the specimens. So popular is the museum as a place to visit, that in the year ending June 30, 1893, over 300,000 persons enjoyed its interesting accumulations.
Correspondence is carried on with learned societies and men of science all over the world. The official list of correspondents is over 24,000. The transactions of learned societies and some other scientific works are exchanged with those abroad. The weight of matter sent abroad by the Smithsonian Institution at the end of the first decade was 14,000 pounds for 1857; at the end of the third decade 99,000 pounds for the year 1877. The official documents of Congress, or by the government bureaus, are exchanged for similar works of foreign nations. In one year, 1892-1893, over 100 tons of books were handled.
The "Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge" now number over thirty volumes, and are valuable treatises on various branches of science. The scholarly William B. Taylor said these books "distributed over every portion of the civilized or colonized world constitute a monument to the memory of the founder, James Smithson, such as never before was builded on the foundation of £100,000."