Life of Count Rumford. 167 



him. Rather did he find sympathy and aid, and that 

 to a somewhat remarkable degree, in the officials and 

 subordinates, civil and military, and even ecclesiastical, 

 in his very radical dealing with abuses. 



The richly embellished city of Munich, on which, 

 with its tripled population, dating after the middle of 

 this century, the munificent King Louis lavished his 

 patronage of art, is a very different place from what it 

 was in the last quarter of the last century, when Thomp- 

 son was its most distinguished and influential citizen. 

 The curse of all the States of the Continent at that 

 time, as it has since been, was the standing army with 

 its incessant recruiting by conscription. The rural 

 population, which should have tilled the fields and 

 pursued the manifold labors of domestic and mechani- 

 cal industry, was drained of its element of vigor, and 

 then demoralized, by the return into it from time to 

 time of its furloughed or relieved bands of lazy loiter- 

 ers, incapacitated for, while they despised, work. 

 Thompson soon found that the root of all the diffi<- 

 culties which he aimed to reach and remove lay in 

 this matter of the army. But he had to proceed with 

 caution, as he already had knowledge that the worst 

 abuses have always the most unprincipled and malig- 

 nant supporters interested in their undisturbed allow- 

 ance. In none of the incidents of his remarkably 

 diversified life, and in none of his vast, comprehen- 

 sive, and benevolent undertakings, does the character 

 of Thompson show itself to higher advantage, on the 

 score of wisdom, patient effort, and magnanimity, than 

 in the course which he pursued in Bavaria, dealing with 

 enormous evils in the spirit of prudence and mildness, 

 while still with a thoroughness of remedy. He spent 



