Life of Count Rumford. 163 



him at this critical stage in his life, "just issued from 

 the forests of the New World." He had passed his 

 thirtieth year, having spent nearly one decade of his 

 life amid scenes, objects, and companionships advanced 

 by a considerable grade in civilization, culture, and 

 -refinement above those with which he was now to be 

 conversant. Nor, indeed, had his American home been 

 in a wilderness. He had known men and women in 

 Salem, Cambridge, and Boston who would not have 

 appeared to disadvantage in any European society. 

 His position, surroundings, and duties, as well as his 

 official and personal relations, differed much from those 

 of Franklin, about the same time at the court of France. 

 But the elder philosopher accomplished his great work no 

 more successfully than did Sir Benjamin his, nor would 

 the former more patiently or more effectively have per- 

 fected than did the latter the details and enterprises of 

 so many by no means inviting but most beneficent 

 schemes. 



Sir Benjamin very rapidly acquired a mastery of the 

 German and French languages. Like a true practical 

 philosopher, also, he gave the whole force of his in- 

 quisitive and comprehensive mind to the preliminary 

 work of infoiming himself generally, and in minute 

 particulars, about everything that concerned the do- 

 minions of the Elector. The relations of the Elector- 

 ate to other powers, within and outside of the empire; 

 its population and their employments ; its resources 

 and the means of their development ; the abuses and 

 evils which admitted of remedies, and the method of 

 applying them, all found in him as curious and intelli- 

 gent an investigator as could have been chosen among 

 the select few most concerned to examine them. If, as 



