Life of Count Rumford. 7 



though he might have been a close listener, was not 

 a perfectly accurate reporter of his friend's communi- 

 cations. 



" Sir Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford, whom half 

 Europe takes to be an Englishman, was born in North Amer- 

 ica in 1753. His family, of English origin, was long settled in 

 New Hampshire, and lived in a place formerly called Rumford, 

 and now Concord, and owned land there before the war of 

 Independence. 



" l If the death of my father,' he said to me one day, c had 

 not, contrary to the order of nature, preceded that of my grand- 

 father, who gave all his property to my uncle, his second son, I 

 should have lived and died an American husbandman. This 

 was a circumstance purely accidental, which, while I was still 

 an infant, decided my destiny in attracting my attention to ob- 

 jects of science. The father of one of my companions, a very 

 respectable minister, and, besides, very enlightened, (by name, 

 Bernard,) gave me his friendship, and, of his own prompting, 

 undertook to instruct me. He taught me algebra, geometry, 

 astronomy, and even the higher mathematics. Before the age 

 of fourteen, I had made sufficient progress in this class of studies 

 to be able without his aid, and even without his knowledge, to 

 calculate and trace rightly the elements of a solar eclipse. We 

 observed it together, and my computation was correct within four 

 seconds. I shall never forget the intense pleasure which this 

 success afforded me, nor the praises which it drew from him. 

 I had been destined for trade, but after a short trial my thirst 

 for knowledge became inextinguishable, and I could not apply 

 myself to anything but my favorite objects of study. I attended 

 the lectures of Dr. Williams, and afterwards those of Dr. 

 Winthrop, at Harvard College, and I made under that happy 

 teacher a sufficiently rapid progress.' 



" ' But at the age you then were,' said I to him, l is a young 

 man the master of his own actions ? How could you follow 

 so, without opposition, the sort of instinct which carried you to- 

 wards a vocation so different from that which had been destined 

 for vou ? ' 



