PERSONAL

Knight of the Dishclout, whereso'er I walk
I hear thee, Rumford, all the kitchen talk:
Note of melodious cadence on the ear,
Loud echoes, Rumford here, and Rumford
there!

Lo, every parlour, drawing-room I see, Boasts of thy stoves, and talks of nought but thee.

-WOLCOTT, JOHN (PETER PINDAR), 1801, A Poetical Epistle to Benjamin Count Rumford.

From this general view of the conduct of Major Thompson and his manner of leaving America, some may have received. unfavorable impressions of his character. But he had never made politics his study, and never perhaps seriously considered the origin and progress of the contest; and if he had sought for employment against his countrymen, he had sufficient opportunities of being gratified. But he wished not to build his fame upon his exploits and dexterity in warlike achievements. He wished not to sacrifice his countrymen, that he might thereby become the hero of the British arms. But, believing that the benevolent plans which he has since adopted could never be executed but under the fostering hand of well-directed power, he sought a field for the exercise of his goodness and ingenuity where they could be executed, and where there was the most obvious demand. In doing this, success has attended his steps, and he has erected in the bosom of every poor man a temple to gratitude which will endure as long as benevolence and charity shall be considered Christian virtues.-BALDWIN, LOAMMI, 1805, Literary Miscellany, vol. I.

I am almost afraid to tell you the story, my good child, lest in future you should not be good; lest what I am about relating should set you a bad example, make you passionate, and so on. But I had been made very angry. A large party had been invited I neither liked nor approved of, and invited for the sole purpose of vexing

me. Our house being in the centre of the garden, walled around, with iron gates, I put on my hat, walked down to the porter's lodge, and gave him orders, on his peril, not to let any one in. Besides I took away the keys. Madame went down, and when the company arrived, she talked with them -she on one side, they on the other, of the high brick wall. After that she goes and pours boiling water on some of my beautiful flowers. RUMFORD, COUNT, 1806, Letter to his Daughter.

I wish here and now only to recall to your minds those of his most directly useful and beneficient works which have made his name known in every part of Europe. Who is ignorant of what he has done for relieving the scarcity in food; of his multiplied efforts for making food more healthful, more agreeable, and, above all, more economical; what service he has rendered to humanity in introducing the general use of the soups which go by his own name, and which have been so invaluable to so many thousands of persons exposed to the horrors of the prevailing scarcity? Who has not been made acquainted with his effective methods for suppressing mendicity; with his Houses of Industry, for work and instruction; with his means for improving the construction of chimneys, of lamps, of furnaces, of baths, of heating by steam; and, in fine, with his varied undertakings in the cause of domestic economy? In England, in France, in Germany, in all parts of the continent, the people are enjoying the blessings of his discoveries; and, from the humble dwelling of the poor even to the palaces of sovereigns, all will remember that his sole aim was to be always useful to his fellow-men.-DELESSERT, BENJAMIN, 1814, Address Pronounced over the Grave of Count Rumford, Aug. 24.

We have seen him here, in fact, for ten years honored by Frenchmen and foreigners, held in high regard by the lovers of

science, sharing their labors, aiding with his advice the humblest artisans, and nobly serving the public by a constant succession of useful inventions. Nothing would have been lacking to the perfect enjoyment of his life, if the amenity of his manners had equalled his ardor in promoting the public welfare. But it must be confessed that he exhibited in conversation and intercourse, and in all his demeanor, a feeling which would seem most extraordinary in a man who was always so well treated by others, and who had himself done so much good to others. It was as if while he had been rendering all these services to his fellow-men he had no real love or regard for them. It would appear as if the vile passions which he had observed in the miserable objects committed to his care, or those other passions, not less vile, which his success and fame had excited among his rivals, had imbittered him towards. human nature. So he thought it was not wise or good to intrust to men in the mass the care of their own, well-being. CUVIER, BARON, 1815, Éloge on Count Rumford, Jan. 9.

The sight of him very much reduced our enthusiasm. We found him a dry, precise man, who spoke of beneficence as a sort of discipline, and of the poor as we had never dared to speak of vagabonds. It was necessary, he said, to punish those who dispensed alms; we must compel the poor to work, etc. Our amazement was great on hearing such maxims. M. de Rumford established himself in Paris, where he married Madame Lavoisier, the widow of the celebrated chemist. I had relations with each of them, and never saw a more bizarre connection. Rumford was cold, calm, obstinate, egotistic, prodigiously occupied with the material element. of life and the very smallest inventions of detail. He wanted his chimneys, lamps, coffee-pots, windows, made after a certain pattern, and he contradicted his wife a thousand times a day about the household management. Madame Lavoisier-Rumford (for so she was called during his life, and did not begin to bear the name of Rumford till after his death) was a woman of a resolute and willful character. A widow during twelve or fifteen years, she had the habit of following her own inclination, and with difficulty bore opposition. Her spirit was high, her soul strong, her character

masculine. Her second marriage was very soon vexed by the most grotesque scenes. Their separation was more of a blessing to both of them than was their union.-DE CANDOLLE, AUGUSTIN-PYRAMUS, 1842-62, Mémoires et Souvenirs.

His true character is rather to be inferred from his useful and philanthropic labors, and his numerous useful and scientific discoveries, than from the report of those who only knew him after his energy was impaired, and he had experienced disappointment and ingratitude. We, however, draw from the report of his French eulogist one prominent trait, which may not have been developed in the preceding pages; this was the love of order, and the strictest observance of method, in all his pursuits. This he called "the necessary auxiliary of genius, the only possible instrument of true happiness, and almost a subordinate divinity in this lower world." It is to this feature in his character, that we are to ascribe all his scientific attainments, and the high reputation he must ever hold in the eyes of posterity. From the time he landed in England, except a single short interval, until he bade adieu to Bavaria, he had been engaged in one continued series of important and engrossing employments, civil, military, and diplomatic; and yet, by a wise and skillful distribution of his time, he found leisure not only to devote himself to the most minute objects of domestic economy, but to enter into and accomplish philosophic investigations, that have become a portion of physical science, which no future discoveries can obliterate.--RENWICK, JAMES, 1845, Count Rumford, Sparks' Library of American Biography, vol. XV, p. 200.

It is hardly necessary to say that there was no ground whatever for the morbid fancy which the Countess connected with the loss of her father, nor was there any extraordinary circumstance attending his death. He was a lonely, and he was not a happy man. Having spent years of most thoughtful, wise, arduous labour for his fellow-men, and having advanced the welfare and comfort and happiness of millions of his race, especially of the poor, the abject, and the forlorn among them,-he did not himself find serenity of heart, or satisfaction in society, or peace in his own fragment of a home. A fever came upon him which, after a rapid course of three

days, ended fatally.-ELLIS, GEORGE E., 1871, Memoir of Sir Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford, p. 613.

Men find pleasure in exercising the powers they possess, and Rumford possessed, in its highest and strongest form, the power of organization. In him flexible wisdom formed an amalgam with despotic strength. He held undoubtingly that "arrangement, method, provision for the minutest details, subordination, co-operation, and a careful system of statistics, will facilitate and make effective any undertaking, however burdensome and comprehensive." Pure love of humanity would at first sight seem to be the motive force of his action. Still, it has been affirmed by those who knew him that this was not the case. Fontenelle said of Dodard, that he turned his rigid observance of the fasts of the Church into a scientific experiment on the effects of abstinence, thereby taking the path which led at once to heaven and into the French

Academy. In Rumford's case the pleasure of the administrator outweighed, it was said, that of the philanthropist.-TYNDALL, JOHN, 1883, Count Rumford, Contemporary Review, vol. 44, p. 48.

In the Maximilian Strasse, the finest

street in Munich, there stands the bronze statue of an American who won renown in three countries of Europe, -England, Germany, and France. Born in Woburn, Mass., marrying in Concord, N. H., he was made a baronet by George III., and Count of the Holy Roman Empire by the Elector of Bavaria. He often dined with Napoleon, he corresponded with the Czar of Russia, and the Emperor of Austria, and he was on intimate terms with all the scientific men of his time. In London he founded the Royal Institution, and cured five hundred smoking chimneys. In Bavaria he suppressed the system of beggary and reformed the army. He taught the world how to cook, he discovered the principle of

the correlation of forces, and he invented porcelain kettles.-ABBOTT, FRANCES M.,

1893, Count Rumford and his Daughter, New England Magazine, vol. 15, p. 463.

GENERAL

This most valuable and important work, whose truly philosophick and benevolent author must feel a joy and self-satisfaction far superior to any praise which man

can bestow.-MATHIAS, THOMAS JAMES, 1794-8, The Pursuits of Literature, p.224.

We profess to be of the daily increasing number of those who do not think very highly of Count Rumford's talents as a philosopher; and if our former prepossession required any confirmation (which it certainly did not), he has taken very great pains, in the elaborate performance now before us, to supply a variety of new proofs. The merits of Count Rumford, too, have been so much a theme. of conversation, and have had such an active influence in the fashionable world of science, that it is proper his pretensions should at length be sifted. But, above all, a paper filled with theoretical matter, abounding in pulses, vibrations, internal motions, and ethereal fluids, deserves to be exposed; the more, because these chimeras are mingled with a portion of induction, and have received the illdeserved honour of a place in the Philosophical Transactions.-BROUGHAM, HENRY LORD, 1804, Count Rumford on the Nature of Heat, Edinburgh Review, vol. 4, pp. 399, 400.

The uncommon popularity which the Count enjoyed for some years seems to have produced a bad effect upon his disposition, or perhaps rather induced him to display without reserve those dispositions which he had hitherto been at some pains to conceal. Pomposity, and a species of literary arrogance quite unsuitable to the nature of experimental philosophy, for some jured their value. years characterized his writings and injured their value. But in some of the last

essays with which he favoured the world we find much valuable and curious information, respecting the heat evolved by different combustibles while burning, -a subject of great interest, which he prosecuted for many years, and at last elucidated with considerable success. THOMSON, THOMAS, 1815, Count Rumford, Annals of Philosophy, vol. 5, p. 243.

His "Essays on Pauperism," and his plans for its relief and prevention, would

alone entitle him to the blessings of man

kind. Almost everything which is valuable in our modern systems of charity may be traced in his writings. When we add all that he did for science, and for the advancement of science, at the Royal Institution in London, and at Harvard, and at our American Academy, his claim to a

statue seems to be far less equivocal, to say the least, than that of many of those who have lately received such commemoration. I trust we shall have a portrait of him, one of these days, in the gallery of our Historical Society, if nowhere else.WINTHROP, ROBERT C., 1867, Letter to George E. Ellis, Aug. 19; Memoir of Count Rumford, Preface, p. vi.

We enter into the labors of Count Rumford every day of our lives, without knowing it or thinking of him. And he had his exceeding great reward. His homely efforts for the daily comfort of mankind led him to the discoveries which have made his name illustrious as a philosopher. His great contributions to science in the development of the correlation and indestructibility of forces, of the relations or rather the identity of force and heat, place him among the foremost discoverers in the world of science. By his experiments he overthrew the theories as to the nature of heat, which had been taken for granted by natural philosophers from the time of Aristotle, and established the true doctrine upon which every succeeding advance of knowledge in that direction rests, and without which none could have been made. The mighty and beneficent agents of light and heat were the objects of his intense study, that he might ascertain how they could best be made to answer the benevolent intentions of the Creator in promoting the happiness of mankind. And his forecasting mind provided fit honors to be

bestowed, on either continent, after his death, on his successors in the same line of investigation and discovery.-QUINCY, EDMUND, 1871, Count Rumford, Atlantic Monthly, vol. 27, p. 521.

In spite of all the progress we have made in physical science, these essays, written for the most part during the last century, contain a great deal that is still suggestive and worthy of thoughtful reading both by popular students and experts in physical and social science.-WILLIAMS, W. MATTIEU, 1875, Count Rumford's Complete Works, Nature, vol. 11, p. 206.

The name and fame of Rumford, which were resonant in Europe at the beginning of this century, have fallen in England into general oblivion. To scientific men, however, his figure presents itself with singular impressiveness at the present day. This result is mainly due to the establishment, in recent times, of the grand scientific generalisation known as the Mechanical Theory of Heat. Boyle, and Hooke, and Locke, and Leibnitz, had already ranged themselves on the side of this theory. But by experiments conducted on a scale unexampled at the time, and by reasonings, founded on these experiments, of singular force and penetration, Rumford has made himself a conspicuous landmark in the history of the theory. His inference from his experiments was scored in favour of those philosophers who held that heat is a form of motion. TYNDALL J., 1883, Count Rumford, Contemporary Review, vol. 44, p. 38.