214 Biographical Memoir of Count Rumford. 



interview, he received the offer of an appointment, and resolved 

 to have no other master. 



He travelled, therefore, rapidly to Vienna, and hastened to 

 return to London, to obtain pei'mission to enter into the service 

 of Bavaria. This was granted to him, with flattering marks of 

 satisfaction on the part of his government. The king knighted 

 him, and allowed him the half-pay belonging to his rank, which 

 he retained till the period of his death. 



To the accomplishments and external advantages of which we 

 have spoken, and the circumstance of his being an Englishman, 

 which is always so great a recommendation on the continent. 

 Sir Benjamin Thomson (for it was with this title that he return- 

 ed to Munich in 1784) added a talent for pleasing, which could 

 hardly have been anticipated in a man that had issued, as it were, 

 from the forests of the new world. The elector, Charles Theo- 

 dore, granted him the most marked favour : he made him 

 successively his aide-de-camp, his chamberlain, member of his 

 council of state, and lieutenant-general of his armies. He pro- 

 cured for him the decorations of the two orders of Poland, be- 

 cause the statutes of those of Bavaria did not then permit his 

 admission to them. Lastly, in the interval between the death 

 of the Emperor Joseph and the coronation of Leopold II., the 

 Elector took advantage of the right which his functions, as vicar 

 of the empire, gave him, to raise Sir Benjamin to the dignity of 

 Count, by ihe name of the district of New Hampshire in which 

 he was born. 



Count Rumford has sometimes been blamed for the import- 

 ance which he seems to have attached to distinctions, to which 

 his real merit might have rendered him indifferent. They who 

 have done so, however, have not sufficiently considered his 

 situation. Formerly, a title without birth was of no estimation 

 among us ; but it is not so in England, where the title, as it 

 were, metamorphoses the man, or in Germany, where one sel- 

 dom receives a great office without, at the same time, receiving 

 a corresponding title. Count Rumford, therefore, might think 

 this custom necessary for the maintenance of a respect which he 

 knew how to render so useful. We have besides seen, by a 

 recent experiment made on the great scale, that some, not being 

 philosophers enough to refuse titles when chance offered them, 



