228 Biographical Memoir of Count Rumjhrd. 



person, was, in all imaginable points, a model of order. His 

 wants, his pleasures, and his labours, were calculated, like his 

 experiments. He drank nothing but water, and ate only fried 

 or roasted meat, because boiled meat, in the same bulk, does 

 not afford quite so much nutriment. In short, he permitted in 

 himself nothing superfluous, not even a step or a word, and it 

 was in the strictest sense that he took the word superfluous. 



This was no doubt a sure means of devoting his whole strength 

 to useful pursuits, but it could not make him an agreeable being 

 in the society of his fellows. The world requires a little more 

 freedom, and is so constituted that a certain height of perfection 

 often appears to it a defect, when the person does not take as 

 much pains to conceal his knowledge as he has taken to acquire 

 it. 



Whatever Count Rumford's sentiments were with respect to 

 men, they diminished nothing of his respect for the Divinity. 

 In his works, he neglected no opportunity of expressing his 

 religious admiration of Providence, and of offering to the ad- 

 miration of others the innumerable and varied precautions of 

 Providence for the preservation of his creatures. Perhaps even 

 his system of politics was derived from the circumstance of his 

 imagining that princes ought to act in like manner, and take 

 care of their subjects, without being accountable to them. 



This rigorous observance of order, which probably marred 

 the pleasure of his life, did not contribute to prolong it. A 

 sudden and violent fever carried him off, in his full vigour, at 

 the age of sixty-one. He died on the 21st August 1814, in 

 his country house of Auteuil, where he passed the summer. 



The notice of his obsequies arriving only at the same time 

 with the news of his death, did not allow his fellow members 

 to perform the accustomed honours at his tomb. But, if such 

 honours, if any efforts to extend renown and render it durable, 

 were ever superfluous, it would be for the man who, by the 

 happy choice of the subjects of his labours, had richly earned 

 the esteem of the learned, and the gratitude of the unfortunate. 



