COUNT RUMFORD. 131 



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 Eoyal Institution of Great 

 Britain. In answer to the American Ambassador, he says, 

 * Nothing could have afforded me so much satisfaction 

 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 pro- 

 sperity 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 ser- 

 vices with that unreasoned freedom which would be 

 necessary in order to enable me to accept of those 

 generous 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 Kumford's daughter. Possibly also the simple tastes 

 and habits of her childhood were too deeply ingrained 

 in her constitution to permit of her deriving any real 

 enjoyment from the outsided, and apparently noisy life 

 which she was forced to lead in Munich and London. 

 Be this as it may, she returned to America, reaching 

 the port of Boston on October 10, 1799, 'being then 

 just twenty- five years of age.' Eumford himself 

 remained in England with the view of realising what 

 I have called the greatest project of his life — the found- 

 ing of the Koyal Institution. 



His ideas on this subject took definite shape in 1799. 

 They were set forth in a pamphlet of fifty pages, bear- 



