1731-1810
TWO years before the birth of Priestley, and in the reign of George II., there was born at Nice, on 10th October 1731, a son to Lord Charles Cavendish, and a nephew of the third Duke of Devonshire. The family is an old one, and traces its descent to Sir John Cavendish, Lord Chief Justice in the reign of Edward III., and to Robert de Gernon a compatriot of the Norman Conqueror; and the first peer was son to William Cavendish, usher to Cardinal Wolsey. The mother of the Hon. Henry Cavendish died when he was two years old, and of his boyhood days nothing is known. At the age of eighteen he went to Cambridge, remaining at Peterhouse for four years, but did not take his degree. This representative of a noble house was a recluse, cold, passionless, selfish, reticent, a misogynist, a hater of noise and bustle, a man of few words, a millionaire, and a devotee to science. "There was nothing earnest, enthusiastic, heroic, or chivalrous in the nature of Cavendish, and as little was there anything mean, grovelling, or ignoble. All that needed for its
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