year, accompanied by his daughter, he thought which had often occurred to him returned to Germany. France and Aus- of returning to his native country now tria were then at war, while Bavaria revived. Mr. Rufus King was at that sought to remain rigidly neutral. Eight time American ambassador in London: days after Rumford's arrival, the elector and he, by Rumford's desire, wrote to took refuge in Saxony. Moreau had Colonel Pickering, then secretary of state crossed the Rhine and threatened Bava- for the United States, informing him of ria. After a defeat by the French, the the count's intention to settle down at or Austrians withdrew to Munich, but found near Cambridge, Massachusetts, where the gates of the city closed against them. he proposed to live in the character of a They planted batteries on a height com- German nobleman, renouncing all politimanding the city. According to an ar- cal action, and devoting himself to literrangement with the elector, Rumford as- ary pursuits. In reply to this communisumed the command of the Bavarian cation Mr. King was authorized to offer forces, and by his firmness and presence Rumford, in addition to the post of superof mind prevented either French or Aus- intendent of the Military Academy, that trians from entering Munich. The consid- of inspector-general of the artillery of the eration in which he is held was illustrated United States; "and we shall moreover by the fact that the elector_made Miss be disposed to give to you such rank and Thompson a countess of the Empire, con- emoluments, as would be likely to afford ferring on her a pension of £200 a year, you satisfaction, and to secure to us the with liberty to enjoy it in any country advantage of your service." where she might wish to reside.

The New England girl, brought up in the quietude of Concord, transplanted thence to London, and afterwards to Munich, was subjected to a somewhat trying ordeal. After a short period of initiation, she appears to have passed through it creditably. Her writing does not exhibit her as possessing any marked qualities of intellect. She was bright, gossipy, "volatile," and throws manifold gleams on the details of Rumford's life. He kept through the year a box at the opera, though he hardly ever went there, and hired by the year a doctor named Haubenal. She amusingly describes a quintuple present made to her by her father soon after her arrival in Munich. The first item was "a little shaggy dog, as white as snow, excepting black eyes, ears and nose; "the second was a lady named Veratzy, who was sent to teach her French and music; the third was a Catholic priest, named Dillis, who was to be her drawingmaster; the fourth was a teacher of Italian, named Alberti; and the fifth, the before-mentioned Dr. Haubenal, who was to look after her health. She did not at all like the arrangement. She was particularly surprised and shocked at a doctor's offering his services before they were wanted. In fact the little dog "Cora" was the only welcome constituent of the gift.

The elector put the seal to his esteem for Rumford by appointing him plenipotentiary from Bavaria to the court of London. King George, however, declined to accept him in this capacity. He was obviously stung by this refusal; and the

The hour of final decision approached, but before it arrived another project had laid hold of Rumford's imagination, a project which in its results has proved of more importance to physical science, and of more advantage to mankind, than any which this multifarious genius had previ ously undertaken. This project was the foundation of the Royal Institution of Great Britain.

His ideas on this subject took definite shape in 1799. They were set forth in a pamphlet of fifty pages, the introduction to which is dated from Rumford's resi. dence in Brompton Row, March 4th, 1799. His aim is to cause science and art to work together; to establish relations between philosophers and workmen ; and to bring their united efforts to bear on the improvement of agriculture, manufactures, commerce, and on the augmentation of domestic comforts. He specially dwells on the management of fire, it being, as he thinks, a subject of peculiar interest to mankind. Fuel, he asserted, cost the kingdom more than ten millions sterling annu. ally, which was more than twice what it ought to cost. In the pall of smoke which hung over London, defacing its edifices and works of art, he saw "unused material which was turned equally to waste and made a means of annoyance and insalubrity." He would bind himself, if the opportunity were allowed him, "to prove to the citizens that the heat and the material of heat thus wasted would suffice to cook all the food in the city, warm every apartment, and perform all the mechanical work done by fire." With his hope, strength, and practical insight, and

T

with the sympathy which he would com-
mand, there is no knowing what might be
accomplished in the way of smoke abate-
ment were he now amongst us.

merston, and Earl Spencer respectively. The first professor of natural philosophy and chemistry was Dr. Thomas Garnett, while the first treasurer was Mr. Thomas Bernard. A home and foreign secretary, legal counsel, a solicitor, and a clerk, were added to the list. One rule established at this time has been adhered to with great fidelity to the present day. No political subject was to be mentioned in the lectures.

Rumford could at this time count on the sympathy and active support of a number of excellent men, who, in advance of him, had founded a "society for bettering the condition and increasing the comforts of the poor." He sought the aid of the committee of this society. It was agreed on all hands that the proposed The word "Institution" was chosen new institution promised to be too impor- because it had been least used previously, tant to permit of its being made an ap- and because it best indicated the objects pendage to any other. A committee of the new society. The mechanical arts consisting of eight members of the old have promoted civilization and refinement. society was, however, appointed to confer Nations, provinces, towns, and even vil with Rumford regarding his plan. The lages thrive in proportion to the activity committee met and ratified Rumford's of their industry. "Exertion quickens proposals. Subscribers of fifty guineas the spirit of invention, makes science each were to be the perpetual proprietors flourish, and increases the moral and of the institution; a contribution of ten physical powers of man." The printingguineas was to secure the privileges of a press, navigation, gunpowder, the steamlife subscriber; whilst a subscription of engine, have changed the whole course of two guineas constituted an annual sub-human affairs. The slowness with which scriber. The managers, nine in number, improvements make their way among were to be chosen by ballot by the pro-workmen arises from prejudice, suspicion, prietors. A committee of visitors was jealousy, dislike of change, and the naralso appointed, the same in number as the committee of managers, and holding office for the same number of years. At a general meeting of the proprietors held at the house of Sir Joseph Banks, in Soho Square, on the 7th of March, 1799, fiftyeight persons, comprising many men of great distinction, were found to have qualified as proprietors by the subscription of fifty guineas each. The committee of managers was chosen, and they held their first meeting at the house of Sir Joseph Banks on the 9th of March, 1799. Mr. Thomas Bernard, one of the most active members of the society from whose committee the first managers were chosen, was appointed secretary. On the 13th of January, 1800, the royal seal was attached Houses in Albemarle Street were purto the charter of the institution. The chased, and modified to suit the objects king was its patron, and the first officers in view. Rumford's obvious intention of the institution were appointed by him. was to found an institute of technology The Earl of Winchester was president. and engineering. The institution was to Lord Morton, Lord Egremont, and Sir be made a repository for models of all Joseph Banks were vice-presidents. The useful contrivances and improvements: managers were divided into three classes cottage fireplaces and kitchen utensils; of three each; the first class serving kitchens for farmhouses and for the for one, the second for two, and the houses of gentlemen; a laundry, includ third for three years. The Earls of Bessing boilers, washing, ironing, and dryingborough, Egremont, and Morton, respec- rooms; German, Swedish, and Russian tively, headed the lists of the three classes stoves; open chimney fireplaces, with of managers. Rumford himself was ap-ornamental grates; ornamental stoves; pointed to serve for three years. The working models "of that most curious three classes of visitors were headed by and most useful machine, the steam-enthe Duke of Bridgewater, Viscount Pal- gine;" brewers' boilers; distillers' cop

rowing effect of the subdivision of work into many petty occupations. But slowness is also due to the greed for wealth, the desire for monopoly, the spirit of secret intrigue exhibited among manufac turers. Between these two the philosopher steps in, whose business it is "to examine every operation of nature and art, and to establish general theories for the direction and conducting of future processes." But philosophers may become dreamers, and they have therefore habitually to be called back to the study of practical questions which bear upon the ordinary pursuits of life. Science and practice are, in short, to interact, to the advantage of both.

within that period you shall have given proofs of your fitness to hold that distinguished situation." This promise of the professorship in two or three years was ominous for Dr. Garnett, between whom and the managers differences soon arose which led to his withdrawal from the institution. Davy began his duties on Wednesday, the 11th of March, 1801.

pers; condensers; large boilers for hos-out to Davy the prospect of becoming, in pitals; ventilating apparatus for hot- the course of two or three years, full prohouses; lime-kilns; steam-boilers for fessor of chemistry, with a salary of 300l. preparing food for stall-fed cattle; spin- per annum, "provided," he adds, "that ning-wheels; looms; agricultural implements; bridges of various constructions; human food; clothing; houses; towns; fortresses; harbors; roads; canals; carriages; ships; tools; weapons; etc. Chemistry was to be applied to soils, tillage, and manures; to the manufacture of bread, beer, wine, spirits, starch, sugar, butter, and cheese; to the processes of dyeing, calico-printing, bleaching, painting, and varnishing; to the smelting of ores; the formation of alloys; to mortars, cements, bricks, pottery, glass, and enamels. Above all, "the phenomena of light and heat-those great powers which give life and energy to the universe - powers which, by the wonderful process of combustion, are placed under the command of human beings will engage a profound interest."

In reference to the alleged size of the bed of Og, the king of Bashan, Bishop Watson asked Tom Paine to determine the bulk to which a human body may be augmented before it will perish by its own weight. As regards the projected institution, Rumford surely had passed this limit, and by the ponderosity of his scheme, had ensured either change or ruin. In such an establishment Davy was sure to become an iconoclast. He cared little for models, not even for the apparatus with which his own best discoveries were made, but incontinently broke it up whenever he found it could be made subservient to further ends.

The name of a man who has no intellectual superior in its annals, now appears for the first time in connection with the institution. At the suggestion of Sir Joseph Banks, Rumford had an interview with Dr. Thomas Young, destined to be. come so illustrious as the first decipherer of the Egyptian hieroglyphics, and as the foremost founder of the undulatory theory of light. Young accepted an engagement as professor of natural philosophy in the Institution, as editor of its journals, and as superintendent of the house, at a salary of £300 per annum.

A portion of the motive force of a man of Rumford's temperament may be described as irritability. During the possession of physical vigor and sound health, this force is grasped by the will and directed by intelligence and tact. But when health slackens and physical vigor subsides, that which had been a firmly ruled power becomes an energy wanting adequate control. Rumford's success in Bavaria illustrates his pliancy as much as his strength. But before he started the Royal Institution his health had given The experimental lectures of Davy way, and his irritability, it is to be feared, were then attracting attention. Rumors got the upper hand. In point of intelof the young chemist reached Rumford, tect, moreover, he came then into contact and, at his request, Davy came to Lon- with people of larger calibre and more don. His life at the moment was purely varied accomplishments than he had prea land of promise, but Rumford had the viously met. He could hardly count upon sagacity to see the promise, and the wis- the entire sympathy of Young and Davy, dom to act upon his insight. Nor was though I believe he remained on friendly his judgment rapidly formed. Several terms with them to the end. They were interviews preceded his announcement to gems of a different water, if I may use Davy, on the 16th of February, 1801, the the term, from Rumford. The chief obresolution of the managers, "That Mr.ject of his fostering care was, at that time, Humphry Davy be engaged in the ser- mechanical invention, applied to the uses vice of the Royal Institution, in the capacity of assistant lecturer in chemistry, director of the chemical laboratory, and assistant editor of the journals of the Institution; and that he be allowed to occupy a room in the house, and be furnished with coals and candles, and that he be paid a salary of one hundred guineas per annum." Rumford, moreover, held

of life. The pleasures of Young and Davy lay in another sphere. To them science was an end, not a means to an end. In his excellent work on the Royal Institution Dr. Bence Jones informs us that difficulties were gathering round it in 1803, and it was even proposed to sell it off. Rumford, being in Paris, with the aid of Davy, Mr. Bernard, and Sir John

Hippisley, carried on the work, "without | 8th of May, 1794; and inheriting his workshops, or mechanics' institute, or great name, together with a fortune of kitchen, or model exhibition." The place three million francs, she gathered round of these was taken by experimental and her, in her receptions, the most distheoretical researches, which instead of tinguished society of Paris. She and dealing with things achieved, carried the Rumford became friends, the friendship mind into unexplored regions of nature, afterwards passing into what was thought forgetful whether the discoveries made in to be genuine affection. The elector of that region had or had not a bearing on Bavaria took great interest in his prothe necessities of material life. jected marriage, and when that consummation came near, settled upon him an annuity of four thousand florins. In a letter to his daughter he thus describes his bride elect: "I made the acquaintance of this very amiable woman in Paris, who, I believe, would have no objection to having me for a husband, and who in all respects would be a proper match for me. She is a widow without children, never having had any; is about my own age (she was four years younger than Rumford), enjoys good health, is very pleasant in society, has a handsome fortune at her own disposal, enjoys a most respectable reputation, keeps a good house, which is frequented by all the first philosophers and men of eminence in the science and literature of the age, or rather of Paris. And, what is more than all the rest, is goodness itself."

Rumford and his institution had to bear the brunt of ridicule, and he felt it; but men of ready wit have not abstained from exercising it on societies of greater age and higher claims. Shafts of sarcasm without number have been launched at the Royal Society. It was perfectly natural for persons who had little taste for scientific inquiry and less knowledge of the methods of nature, to feel amused, if not scandalized, by the apparently insignificant subjects which sometimes occupied the scientific mind. They were not aware that in science the most stupendous phenomena often find their suggestion and interpretion in the most minute that the smallest laboratory fact is connected by indissoluble ties with the grandest operations of nature. Thus the iridescences of the common soap-bubble, subjected to scientific analysis, have emerged in the conclusion that stellar space is a plenum filled with a material substance capable of transmitting motion with a rapidity which would girdle the equatorial earth eight times in a second; while the tremors of this substance in one form constitute what we call light, and, in all forms, constitute what we call radiant heat. Not seeing this connection between great and small; not discerning that as regards the illustration of physical principles there is no great and no small, the wits, considering the small contemptible, permitted sarcasm to flow accordingly. But these things have passed away, while the ridicule and intolerance from which she once suffered, are now, I think unfairly, sometimes laid to the charge of science.

This lapsing of the technical side of Rumford's scheme can hardly be called a defeat, for his institution flourishes to the present bour. The real defeat of his life was yet to come, and it came through a power pronounced on high authority to be the strongest in the world. While in Paris, he made the acquaintance of Madame Lavoisier, a lady of wealth, spirit, social distinction, and, it is to be added, a lady of temper. Her illustrious husband had suffered under the guillotine on the

All preliminaries having been arranged, Count Rumford and Madame Lavoisier were married in Paris on the 24th of October, 1805. He describes the house in which they lived, Rue d'Anjou, No. 39, as a paradise. In a letter written to Countess Sarah two months after his marriage, he refers to their style of living as really magnificent; his wife was exceedingly fond of company, in the midst of which she made a splendid figure. She seldom went out, but kept open house to all the great and worthy. He describes their dinners and evening teas, which must have been trying to a man who longed for quiet. The dinners, his daughter says, he could have borne, but the teas annoyed him. Instead of living melodious days, his life gradually became a discord; and on the 15th of January, 1806, he confides to his daughter, as a family secret, that he is "not at all sure that two certain persons were not wholly mistaken in their marriage, as to each other's characters." The dénouement hastened; and on the first anniversary of his marriage he describes his wife as "a female dragon." On the second anniversary, matters were worse. The quarrels between him and Madame had become more violent and open. He gives the following sample of them: “I am almost afraid to tell you the

story, my good child, lest in future you | painful to do away with the sins of a thou should not be good; lest what I am about sand years. Rumford, in fact, writes with relating should set you a bad example, the bitterness of a defeated man. His make you passionate, and so on. But I wife retained her friends, while he, who a had been made very angry. A large party short time previously had been the obhad been invited I neither liked nor ap served of all observers, found himself proved of, and invited for the sole purpose practically isolated. This was a new and of vexing me. Our house being in the bitter experience, the thought of which, centre of the garden, walled around, with pressing on him continually, destroyed all iron gates, I put on my hat, walked down magnanimity in his references to her. to the porter's lodge, and gave him orders, Notwithstanding his hostility to his wife, on his peril, not to let any one in. Be- he permitted her to visit him on appar. sides I took away the keys. Madame ently amicable terms. The daughter went down, and when the company ar- paints her character as admirable, ascrib rived, she talked with them she on one ing their differences to individual indeside, they on the other, of the high brick pendence, arising from their having been wall. After that she goes and pours accustomed to rule in their own ways: boiling water on some of my beautiful "It was a fine match, could they but have flowers." The wrangling went on, and agreed." One day in driving out with her he made up his mind for a separation, father, she remarked to him how odd it purposing to take a house at Auteuil. It was that he and his wife could not get on would be unfortunate if he could not live together, when they seemed so friendly to more independently than with this unfeel- each other, adding that it struck her that ing, cunning, tyrannical woman. "Alas! Madame de Rumford could not be in her little do we know people at first sight!" right mind. He replied bitterly, "Her He describes his habitation as no longer mind is, as it has ever been, to act differthe abode of peace. He breakfasts alone ently from what she appears." in his apartment, while to his infinite chagrin most of the visitors are his wife's determined adherents. "A separation," he says, "is unavoidable, for it would be highly improper for me to continue with a person who has given me so many proofs of her implacable hatred and malice."

The lease of the villa at Auteuil was purchased by Rumford in 1808, and the separation took place "amicably" on the 13th of June, 1809.* Ever afterwards, however, anger rankled in his heart, and he never mentions his wife but in terms of repugnance and condemnation. His release from her filled him at first with unnatural elation, and on the fourth anniversary of his wedding-day he writes to his daughter, "I make choice of this day to write to you, in reality to testify joy, but joy that I am away from her." On the fifth anniversary he writes thus: "You will perceive that this is the anniversary of my marriage. I am happy to call it to mind that I may compare my present situation with the three and a half horrible years I was living with that tyrannical, avaricious, unfeeling woman." The closing six months of his married life he describes as a purgatory sufficiently

From 1772 to 1800, Rumford's house at Auteuil

had been the residence of the widow of a man highly celebrated in his day as a freethinker, but whom Lange describes as "the vain and superficial Helvetius." It is also the house where, in the month of January, 1870, the young journalist Victor Noir was shot dead by

Prince Pierre Bonaparte.

He made

The statesman Guizot was one of Madame de Rumford's most intimate friends, and his account of her and her house differs considerably from the account of both given by her husband. Rumford became her guest at a time when he enjoyed in public "a splendid scientific popularity. His spirit was lofty, his conversation was full of interest, and his manners were marked by gentle kindness. himself agreeable to Madame Lavoisier. She married him, happy to offer to a distinguished man a great fortune and a most agreeable existence." The lady, according to Guizot, had stipulated, on her sec. ond marriage, that she should be permitted to retain the name of Lavoisier, calling herself Madame Lavoisier de Rumford. This, it is said, proved disa greeable to the count, but she was not to be moved from her determination to retain the name. "I have," she says, "at the bottom of my heart a profound conviction that M. de Rumford will not disapprove of me for it, and that on taking time for reflection, he will permit me to continue to fulfil a duty which I regard as sacred." Guizot adds that the hope proved deceptive, and that "after some domestic agitations, which M. de Rumford, with more of tact, might have kept from becoming so notorious, a separation became necessary." Her dinners and receptions during the remaining twentyseven years of her life, are described as