on the 25th of January 1807 received orders to proceed to Malta, whence he joined Sir John Duckworth, who was sent to act against the Turks. On the 7th of February, with the rear division of the squadron, he destroyed the Turkish fleet and spiked the batteries off Abydos. In November following he was sent to blockade the Tagus, and was mainly instrumental in embarking the Portuguese prince regent and royal family for Rio de Janeiro, after which he was sent as commander-in-chief to the coast of S. America in February 1808. At Rio. he was entangled in another quarrel with the British minister, Lord Strangford, and was summarily recalled in 1809. On the 31st of July 1810 he was made vice-admiral of the blue, and on the 18th of July 1812 was despatched as second in command under Sir Edward Pellew (afterwards Viscount Exmouth) to the Mediterranean, but the expedition was uneventful. His term of active service practically closed in 1814. He was made K.C.B. in 1815 and in 1821 admiral. The later years of his life were spent at Paris, where he died on the 26th of May 1840. His restless self-assertion brought him into collision with many of his Contemporaries, including Nelson and Sir John Moore. Colonel Bunbury’s Narrative of some Passages in the Great War with France contains a most amusing account of his theatrical vanity. But though by nature a boaster he was both daring and ingenious.
See Barrow, Life of Admiral Sir W. S. Smith (2 vols., 1848).
SMITH, a worker in metals. The O. Eng. smid, Du. smid, Ger. Schmied, &c., are from an obsolete Teut. verb smeithan, to forge. The root is seen in Gr. σμίλη, a graver’s tool. It is apparently not connected with “smooth,” where an original m has been lost. There is no foundation for the old etymological guess which identifies “smith” with “to smite,” as the one who smites or beats iron. When used without such qualification as appears in “goldsmith,” “silversmith,” &c., the term means a worker in iron, especially as indicating a “blacksmith,” one who forges iron, as opposed to “whitesmith,” the finisher and polisher of iron, or “tinsmith,” a worker in tin. The word has originated one of the commonest of English surnames, sometimes taking various archaic forms (Smyth, Smythe, Smigth, &c.; also German Schmidt).
SMITH COLLEGE, an American institution for the higher education of women, at Northampton, Massachusetts. It was founded by the will of Sophia Smith (1796–1870) of Hatfield, who gave money to Smith Academy in Northampton and to Andover Theological Seminary, and who left about $365,000 “for the establishment and maintenance of an institution for the higher education of young women, with the design to furnish them means and facilities for education equal to those which are afforded in our colleges for young men”; she chose Northampton as the site of the college and selected the trustees. The college was chartered in 1871 and was opened in 1875.
On the college campus in the central part of Northampton are College Hall, with administrative offices, an assembly hall, and lecture rooms; Seelye Hall, with department offices and recitation rooms; a library, completed in 1910 and containing 30,000 volumes in that year; an auditorium, with a large organ and a seating capacity of 2500; the Lilly Hall of Science; Chemistry Hall; an astronomical observatory; Music Hall; the Hillyer Art Gallery, with an endowment of $50,000 for the increase of its collections; the Students’ Building for the social life of the students; the Lyman Plant House and the Botanic Garden; the Alumnae Gymnasium; the Allen Recreation Field; sixteen (in 1910) dwelling-houses for the student on the plan of private homes, not dormitories; an infirmary; and Sunnyside, a home for convalescents. Entrance requirements differ little from those of the College Entrance Examination Board. All undergraduate courses are largely elective and lead to the degree of Bachelor of Arts. Graduate courses lead to the degrees of Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy, the latter degree being rarely conferred and “only in recognition of high scholarly attainment and of ability to carry on original research.” In 1909–1910 there were 104 teachers and 1635 students (of whom 8 were graduate students), and the college had an endowment of about $1,300,000 The annual tuition charge was $100 until 1909, when it became $150. There are six fellowships, of $500 each, which are granted for graduate research; and there are many undergraduate scholarships, and loan are made to needy students by the Smith Students’ Aid Society (1897). The College contributes to the American Classical Schools at Athens and Rome, to the Zoological Station at Naples, and to the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, Massachusetts. The first president of the college from 1873 to September 1910 was Lawrenus Clark Seelye (b. 1837), a graduate of Union College and of Andover Theological Seminary.
SMITH'S FALLS, a town and outport of Lanark county, Ontario, Canada, on the Rideau river and canal, and the Canadian Pacific railway, 28 m. N.W. of Brockville, Pop. (1901) 5155. It contains saw, shingle, woollen and planing mills, and large agricultural implement works, and has regular steamer connexion with Kingston and Ottawa by the Rideau river and canal.
SMITHSON, HENRIETTA CONSTANCE (1800–1854), Irish actress, was the daughter of a theatrical manager. She made her first stage appearance in 1815 at the Crow Street theatre, Dublin, as Albina Mandeville in Reynolds’s Will. Three years later she made her first London appearance at Drury Lane as Letitia Hardy. She had no particular success in England; but in Paris, in 1828 and 1832, whither she first went with Macready, she aroused immense enthusiasm as Desdemona, Virginia, Juliet and Jane Shore. She had a host of admirers, among them Hector Berlioz (q.v.), whom she married in 1833. They separated in 1840. At the time of her marriage her popularity was already over and she was deeply in debt. A benefit was given her, but she had the mortification of seeing rival applauded when she herself was coldly received. She retired from the stage, and died on the 3rd of March 1854.
SMITHSON, JAMES (1765–1829), British chemist and mineralogist and founder of the Smithsonian Institution at Washington, natural son of Hugh Smithson, 1st duke of Northumberland, by Mrs Elizabeth Keate Macie, a granddaughter of Sir George Hungerford of Studley, was born in France in 1765. He was educated at Pembroke College, Oxford, where he graduated in 1786, and was known in early life as James Lewis (or Louis) Macie. He took the name of James Smithson about the year 1800. His attention was given to chemistry and mineralogy, and he published analyses of calamines and other papers in the Annals of Philosophy and Phil. Trans. The mineral name “smithsonite” was originally given in his honour by Beudant to zinc carbonate, but having also been applied to the silicate, the name is now rarely used. In 1784 he accompanied Faujas St Fond in his journey to the Western Isles, and in the English translation of the Travels in England, Scotland and the Hebrides (1799) Smithson is spoken of as “M. de Mecies of London.” He was elected F.R.S. in 1787. He died at Genoa on the 27th of June 1829. By his will he bequeathed upwards of £100,000 to the United States of America to found the Smithsonian Institution. The institution (see below) was founded by act of Congress on the 10th of August 1846.
See “James Smithson and his Bequest” (with portraits), by W. J. Rhees, and “The Scientific Writings of James Smithson,” edited by W. J. Rhees, Smithsonian Misc. Coll., vol. xxi. (1879–1880).
SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, an American institution of learning in Washington, D.C., founded by the bequest of James Smithson (q.v.), who seems to have known of Joel Barlow’s plan for a national institution of learning in the city of Washington in accordance with George Washington’s recommendation in his farewell address of 1796. His estate was left to a nephew, Henry James Hungerford, with the stipulation that should Hungerford die without issue the whole estate should go “to the United States of America to found at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men.” Hungerford died without issue in 1835. There was much opposition in America to the acceptance of Smithson’s bequest, especially by John C. Calhoun and others who held that Congress had no power under the Constitution to accept such a gift, but the gift was accepted, largely through the efforts of John Quincy Adams; and Richard Rush, sent to England as agent for the United States, quickly obtained a verdict for the American claim to the estate. In September 1838 £104,960 in gold sovereigns was delivered from the clipper “Mediator” to the Philadelphia mint, where it was recoined into American money, $508,318·46; in 1867, after the death of Hungerford’s mother, a residuary legacy of $26,210 was received and the fund then
