Life of Count Rumford. 383 



"In the beginning of the year 1796 I gave a faint 

 sketch of this plan in my second Essay ; but being 

 under the necessity of returning soon to Germany, I 

 had not leisure to pursue it farther at that time ; and I 

 was obliged to content myself with having merely 

 thrown out a loose idea, as it were by accident, which 

 I thought might possibly attract attention. After my 

 return to Munich, I opened myself more fully on the 

 subject in my correspondence with my friends in this 

 country [England], and particularly in my letters to 

 Thomas Bernard, Esq., who, as is well known, is one 

 of the founders and most active members of the So- 

 ciety for bettering the Condition and increasing the Com- 

 forts of the Poor." * 



The Count subjoins, in a note, three letters of his to 

 Mr. Bernard, dated at Munich, 28th April, 1797, I3th 

 May, 1798, and 8th June, 1798. The first of these 

 letters returns the writer's grateful acknowledgments 

 for the honor done him by his election as a member of 

 the Society for bettering the condition of the poor. It 

 closes with a characteristic suggestion that visible ex- 

 amples, "by models," will advance its objects better 

 than will anything that can be said or written. .The 

 third letter emphasizes a well-pointed hint, that indolent, 

 selfish, and luxurious persons " must either be allured 



* In the Gentleman's Magazine, Vol. LXXXVIII., for 1818, p. 82, there is an 

 obituary notice of Sir Thomas Bernard, third son of Sir Francis, Royal Governor of 

 Massachusetts, from which the following is an extract : "In 1799, on the suggestion 

 of Count Rumford, he set on foot the plan of the Royal Institution ; for which the 

 King's Charter was obtained on the I3th of January, 1800, which has been of emi- 

 nent service in affording a school for useful knowledge to the young people of the 

 metropolis, and in bringing forward to public notice many learned and able men in 

 the capacity of lecturers 5 and most of all, in its laboratory being the cradle of the 

 transcendent discoveries of Sir Humphry Davy, which have benefited and enlightened 

 Europe and the whole world." 



