Life of Count Rumford. 3 



they can be referred to foreign soil and foreign cus- 

 toms. 



The services of Franklin as a patriotic statesman lift 

 him on a higher pedestal. Yet two widely discordant 

 opinions have been held and expressed as to the general 

 effect on the qualities of nobleness and unworldliness 

 of character, as illustrated in New England, of his cal- 

 culating, prudential, and thrift-bringing philosophy. If, 

 according to what we shall find was the judgment of one 

 of Benjamin Thompson's most intimate friends, his 

 eulogist, also, we shall see reason to admit that he 



O ' * 



did not really love his fellow-men, and could not yield 

 even his own self-will and conform his own personal 

 habits to the ordinary conditions of sympathetic in- 

 tercourse, we may be led to recognize all the more 

 gratefully his patient, persistent, and ingenious indus- 

 try, given in so many ways to ends of true benevo- 

 lence. 



Benjamin Thompson came on both sides of his 

 parentage from the original stock of the first colonists 

 of Massachusetts Bay. When, in his thirty-first year, 

 he had attained such distinction in England as to receive 

 the honor of knighthood from King George III., he 

 was naturally concerned to provide himself with proper 

 armorial bearings, and, if possible, to appropriate such 

 as might already be attached to the name which he bore. 

 He could not have done better than to adopt a device 

 which, as we shall soon see, was the product of his own 

 youthful ingenuity alike in designing and in engraving, 

 and equally characteristic of his nature, circumstances, 

 and prospects in life. But he seems to have forgotten 

 this, and to have aimed higher, in this instance failing in 

 his flight. His emblazoned diploma of arms is now 



