2O2 Life of Count Rumford. 



entailed, seems to have caused him some bitterness of 

 feeling, from a suspicion which it roused in him. He 

 thus refers to this painful experience. In his account 

 of his Experiments on Gunpowder, he had promised at 

 some time to give to the public the results of some 

 other experiments which he had been making for several 

 years upon the strength of various bodies. But he was 

 obliged to add in a note : 



" Since writing the above, I have met with a misfortune 

 which has put it out of my power to fulfil this promise. On 

 my return to England from Germany, in October, 1795, after an 

 absence of eleven years, I was stopped in my post-chaise, in St. 

 Paul's Churchyard, in London, at six o'clock in the evening, and 

 robbed of a trunk which was behind my carriage, containing 

 all my private papers, and my original notes and observations 

 on philosophical subjects. By this cruel robbery I have been 

 deprived of the fruits of the labours of my whole life, and have 

 lost all that I held most valuable. This most severe blow has 

 left an impression on my mind which I feel that nothing will 

 ever be able entirely to remove. It is the more painful to me, 

 as it has clouded my mind with suspicions that never can be 

 cleared up." 



Rumford's friend, Colonel Baldwin, writing before he 

 had knowledge of this misfortune, says that the Count 

 "has prepared, for his own amusement, a short sketch 

 c of the vicissitudes of a life checkered by a great 

 variety of incidents.' ' As this sketch, which would 

 have had a profound interest, has never appeared, and 

 is not now known to be in existence, we may infer that 

 it was with the other private papers, the loss of which 

 the Count thus deplores. We can only conjecture the 

 nature of his suspicions which aggravated that loss as 

 possibly referring to the jealousy of some rival, or the 



* Literary Miscellany, Vol. II. p 33. 



