Biographical Memoir of Count Ruviford. 213 



sciences from a new point of view, when he required their as- 

 sistance in a great military and civil administration. The states- 

 man remembered that he was a natural philosopher and geome- 

 trician. His genius had assisted in establishing his credit ; he 

 employed his reputation to second his genius ; and in this man- 

 ner each new service that he rendered to the country which had 

 attached him to itself, produced some discovery, and each dis- 

 covery that he made enabled him to render some new service. 



It was the late king who gave Mr Thomson to Bavaria. 

 The young colonel, on his way to Vienna, passing through 

 Strasburg, where the Prince Maximilian de Deux-Ponts, after- 

 wards King of Bavaria, commanded a regiment, presented him- 

 self at parade on horseback, and in his uniform. At this time 

 the whole conversation of the military turned on the American 

 campaigns. It was natural for them to be desirous of hearing 

 an English officer speak on the subject ; he was therefore intro- 

 duced to the prince, when some French officers were present, 

 who had served in the opposite army. The manner in which he 

 described what he had seen, the plans he showed, the original 

 ideas he threw out, were a proof that Mr Thomson was a man 

 of no ordinary acquirements ; and the prince, knowing that he 

 was to pass through Munich, gave him strong recommendations 

 to his uncle, the reigning elector. 



Charles Theodore, who, from being a mere prince of Sulz- 

 bach, had become, by the successive extinction of the chief 

 branches of the Palatine house, sovereign of two electorates, was, 

 in many respects, worthy of this favour of fortune. He was a 

 man of intellect and education, and displayed a taste for science, 

 and for all that announced greatness of mind : he encouraged 

 the arts in his dominions, built beautiful palaces, and founded 

 the Academy of Manheim. If he did not adopt in his govern- 

 ment those maxims of philanthropy and toleration which now 

 prevail in the counsels of princes, it is to be attributed to the 

 epoch in which he received his education, an epoch in which 

 Louis XIV. passed in Germany for the model and ideal of a 

 perfect monarch. We have already said, and we shall see 

 still more plainly in the sequel, that Mr Thomson's ideas were 

 much of the same nature. He could not therefore fail to esteem 

 the Elector, nor the Elector him ; and, in fact, after the first 



