COUNT RUMFORD. 131 



This they offered to place under the superintendence 

 of Rumford. " I am authorised," said Mr. King, " to 

 offer you, in addition to the superintendence of the 

 military academy, the appointment of Inspector-Gen- 

 eral of the Artillery of the United States; and we 

 shall moreover be disposed to give to you such rank and 

 emoluments as would be likely to afford you satisfaction, 

 and to secure to us the advantage of your service." 



The hour for the final decision approached, but be- 

 fore it arrived another project had laid hold of Ruin- 

 ford's imagination a project which in its results has 

 proved of more importance to science, and probably of 

 more advantage to mankind, than any which this multi- 

 farious genius had previously undertaken. This project 

 was the foundation of the Royal Institution of Great 

 Britain. In answer to the American Ambassador, he 

 says, " Xothing could have afforded me so much satisfac- 

 tion as to have had it in my power to have given to my 

 liberal and generous countrymen such proof of my sen- 

 timents as would, in the most public and ostensible 

 manner, have evinced, not only my gratitude for the 

 kind attentions I have received from them, but also 

 the ardent desire I feel to assist in promoting the pros- 

 perity of my native country; but engagements, which 

 great obligations have rendered sacred and inviolable, 

 put it out of my power to dispose of my time and 

 services with that unreasoned freedom which would be 

 necessary in order to enable me to accept of those gener- 

 ous offers which the Executive Government of the 

 United States has been pleased to propose to me." 



The climate of Europe, however, did not seem to 

 suit Rumford's daughter. Possibly also the simple 

 tastes and habits of her childhood were too deeply in- 

 grained in her constitution to permit of her deriving 

 any real enjoyment from the outsided, and apparently 



