COUNT EUMFORD. 95 



another Benjamin, who reached a level of fame as high as 

 his own. Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin Thompson 

 were born within twelve miles of each other, and for 

 six of the thirty years just referred to the one lived in 

 England and the other in France. Still, there is nothing 

 to show that they ever saw each other, or were in any 

 way acquainted with each other, or, indeed, felt the 

 least interest in each other. As regards posthumous 

 fame, Rumford has fared worse than Franklin. For ten, 

 or perhaps a hundred, people in this country who know 

 something of the career of the one, hardly a unit is to 

 be found acquainted with the career of the other. 

 Among scientific men, however, the figure of Rumford 

 presents itself with singular impressiveness at the 

 present day a result mainly due to the establishment 

 of the grand scientific generalisation known as the 

 Mechanical Theory of Heat. Boyle, and Hooke, and 

 Locke, and Leibnitz, had already distinctly ranged 

 themselves on the side of this theory. But by experi- 

 ments conducted on a scale unexampled at the time, 

 and by reasonings, founded on these experiments, of 

 singular force and penetration, Rumford has made him- 

 self a conspicuous landmark in the history of the theory. 

 His inference from his experiments was that heat is a 

 form of motion. 



The town of Woburn, connected in my memory with 

 a cultivated companion, with genial sunshine and the 

 bright colouring of American trees, is nine miles distant 

 from the city of Boston. In North Woburn, a little way 

 off, on March 26, 1753, Rumford was born. He came of 

 people who had to labour for their livelihood, who tilled 

 their own fields, cut their own timber and fuel, worked 

 at their varied trades, and thus maintained the in- 

 dependence of New England^*eemaa^. Thompson's 



