Life of Count Rumford. 619 



and rejection as ambassador, to the death of his friend 

 the Elector, and to the circumstances, already related, 

 which induced Rumford to withdraw from Bavaria. 

 The eulogist proceeds : 



" The time at last arrived when a decisive retreat became 

 almost a necessity to him ; and it was no slight honor for 

 France that a man who was held in such consideration in the 

 most civilized countries of two worlds should prefer this for a 

 final sojourn. It was because he had promptly apprehended 

 that this is the country where full celebrity is most surely 

 awarded to whatever is worthy of true distinction, indepen- 

 dently of the transient favor of courts and all the freaks of 

 fortune. 



" We have seen him here, in fact, for ten years honored by 

 Frenchmen and foreigners, held in high regard by the lovers of 

 science, sharing their labors, aiding with his advice the humblest 

 artisans, and nobly serving the public by a constant succession 

 of useful inventions. Nothing would have been lacking to the 

 perfect enjoyment of his life, if the amenity of his manners had 

 equalled his ardor in promoting the public welfare. 



" But it must be confessed that he exhibited in conversation and 

 intercourse, and in all his demeanor, a feeling which would seem 

 most extraordinary in a man who was always so well treated by 

 others, and who had himself done so much good to others. It 

 was as if while he had been rendering all these services to his 

 fellow-men he had no real love or regard for them. It would 

 appear as if the vile passions which he had observed in the 

 miserable objects committed to his care, or those other passions, 

 not less vile, which his success and fame had excited among his 

 rivals, had imbittered him towards human nature. So he thought 

 it was not wise or good to intrust to men in the mass the care 

 of their own well-being. The right, which seems so natural 

 to them, of judging whether they are wisely governed, appeared 

 to him to be a fictitious fancy born of false notions of en- 

 enlightenment. His views of slavery were nearly the same as 

 those of a plantation-owner. He regarded the government of 



