456 Life of Count Rumford. 



from others, was to translate them into German for as 

 early publication as possible. The translator had pre- 

 viously made a compilation from the writings of Frank- 

 lin, for which he says he thought those of Rumford "a 

 worthy pendant." The Preface to his first edition was 

 dated at Weimar, where the translation was published, 

 June 1 6, 1797. The fourth edition of this translation 

 appeared in 1806. The subjects, especially those of re- 

 form and benevolence, to which public attention and 

 the enthusiasm of more generous spirits were engaged 

 by those Essays, were then comparatively novel. They 

 were presented by the Count almost equally as pressing 

 obligations of duty and as offering pure and happy 

 satisfactions for those who would labor to advance 

 them. Experience proved that his institutions in Bava- 

 ria, however wisely planned, and even however gene- 

 rously supported by government patronage and by 

 money, needed the watchful and zealous oversight of 

 a disinterested and well-sustained superintendent, 

 needed, in fact, a succession of Count Rumfords. He 

 found on the transient visits which he made to Munich, 

 after his rejection by the English government as the 

 Minister of Bavaria, that these institutions certainly 

 were not increasingly prosperous. To a moderate ex- 

 tent he might, indeed, take for granted that a few years 

 of their effective working would be corrective or reme- 

 dial of the gigantic evils of mendicity and pauperism in 

 Bavaria, and therefore that, so far as the decline of the 

 institutions signified that they had answered their pur- 

 pose, there was really no occasion for regret. 



We have seen, too, how largely and earnestly the 

 Count devoted himself in Great Britain to schemes of 

 pure benevolence, in which his scientific interest and 



