6 Life of Count R^lmford. 



the grandparents. In March, 1756, when the child 

 was three years old, his widowed mother was married to 

 Josiah Pierce, Jr., of Woburn. Mr. Pierce took his 

 wife and her child to a new home, which, now removed, 

 stood but a short distance from the old homestead, 

 opposite the present conspicuous and venerable Baldwin 

 mansion. 



The Biographic Nouvelle, in its article on Count 

 Rumford, says that he would have been left in his 

 infancy to absolute destitution, had not his grandfather 

 taken pity on him. The article in the Encyclopedia 

 Britannica says that the child's step-father banished him 

 from his mother's house almost in his infancy. Chal- 

 mers's Biography substantially repeats the statements. 

 These are drawn from, and are supposed to be warranted 

 by, certain particulars given by M. A. Pictet, in the 

 Bibliotficque Britannique. Pictet was an intimate, con- 

 fidential, and admiring friend of Count Rumford, 

 and has recorded much very interesting information 

 concerning him which can be got from no other source. 

 I shall have occasion by and by to draw largely and 

 gratefully from that information. Meanwhile, it is in 

 place here to say that while M. Pictet was on a visit to 

 England in 1801, he spent several days in the house 

 of Count Rumford, at Brompton Row, as his guest, 

 and was wont to draw from him confidentially par- 

 ticulars of his life, of which he took notes for subse- 

 quent publication. 



I anticipate the relation of this friendship and its 

 results so far as to translate from Pictet such matter as 

 has been made the basis of the at least over-colored 

 statements that have been referred to. It will be noticed 

 by the error in the first paragraph following, that Pictet, 



