Life of Count Rumford. 233 



social scale. Franklin to outward seeming, at least 

 was more indifferent than was Rumford to the prestige 

 and assumptions of the aristocracy. Yet we should give 

 to the latter the benefit of judging him by a principle of 

 his own, which, in his following of it, may have fur- 

 nished him with a disinterested motive. That princi- 

 ple was that all reforms and improvements must be 

 directed with an aim to relieve and help the common 

 people, and that a prime condition for a successful 

 application of them was to engage for them the sym- 

 pathetic interest of the privileged, the nobility, and the 

 .wealthy. 



Incident to his very laborious and ardent efforts for 

 cheapening the production- and preparation of nutritive 

 food, and indeed as the essential condition for success 

 in those efforts, the Count devoted himself most zeal- 

 ously to the study and the mechanical improvement of 

 all the apparatus connected with fireplaces an.d chimney- 

 flues. When he first published his Essay on " Chim- 

 ney Fire-places, with Proposals for improving them to 

 save Fuel; to render Dwelling-houses more Comforta- 

 ble and Salubrious, and effectually to prevent Chimneys 

 from Smoking," the Count was able to say that he 

 " had not had less than five hundred smoking chimneys 

 under his hands." Of course the announcement was 

 an advertisement of himself as an expert in a rather 

 uninviting occupation. But he was so zealous and 

 unwearied a worker in such economical reforms that 

 he never refused to give his services, whether in palace, 

 poor house, or farmer's cottage. His first experiment 

 in London was tried in Lord Palmerston's house, in 

 Hanover Square. Then he took in hand the chimneys 

 of the house where the Board of Agriculture held its 



