452 Life of Count Rumford. 



mitrht be considered as well established in either of 



,. 

 those countries. But we must recognize a distinction 



in the character of his services in each of them, as 

 affecting the renewed or the popular remembrance of 

 him. The severest and the most protracted labors 

 which he performed were those that had employed him 

 in Bavaria, where he had spent the longest period of 

 years successively, after he left his native country. 

 And his work in Bavaria had been mainly that of 

 benevolent activity in instituting, organizing, and over- 

 seeing schemes and establishments of a humane and 

 reformatory character. But work of this sort, however 

 effective for the time, and however conspicuous in its 

 beneficence, and however gratefully appreciated, has 

 directly, at least, but a temporary and local influence. 

 The record in the Count's Essays relating to it may 

 indeed, by the help of the press and by commemo- 

 rative tributes, inspire and guide successive laborers in 

 the fields of .practical benevolence, and in dealing with 

 new phases and difficulties of the permanent problems 

 and evils presented by poverty. But as buildings fall 

 to ruin and require renewal, and as cultivated fields 

 and gardens run to waste, and an increasing population 

 multiplies the ranks and intensifies the mischiefs and 

 miseries of pauperism, so there must be a reconstruc- 

 tion, through new adaptations, of the theory and prac- 

 tice of beneficence ; while those who labor in this cause 

 for their own generation must consent to be superseded, 

 that others following them may receive their just trib- 

 utes. Count Rumford is by no means forgotten in 

 Bavaria, nor\ have the institutions which he so zealously 

 and wisely founded and put into operation passed under 

 complete decay, or fallen into oblivion. Natives and 



