Life of Count Rumford. 335 



honor of the office, with the prospective social position 

 which it would secure him, was evidently highly prized 

 by him, as also the discomfiture which he experienced 

 in his disappointment was equally great, I am glad 

 to be able to give an authentic statement of particulars 

 concerning it.* 



The Elector of Bavaria had offered the position of 

 Minister at the English court to Count Rumford as 

 the successor of Count Haslang, who had retired after 

 having held the office very many years. The appoint- 

 ment of Rumford being known in England before his 

 arrival, Lord Grenville, on the I4th of September, 

 1798, sent a despatch to the Hon. Arthur Paget, the 

 English Minister at Munich, as follows: 



"DOWNING STREET, Sept r 14, 1798. 



" HoN b ! e ARTHUR PAGET. 



" SIR, His Majesty has seen, with some surprise, in the 

 late^dispatches from M r Shepherd, which I have had the hon- 

 our to lay before him, that the Elector of Bavaria has nomi- 

 nated Count Rumford to succeed Count Haslang as His Elec- 

 toral Highness's Minister at this Court. It is, I apprehend, a 

 thing if not wholly unprecedented, at least extremely unusual, 

 to appoint a subject of the Country to reside at the Court of his 

 natural Sovereign in the character of Minister from a Foreign 

 Prince. And I am to direct you to lose no time in apprizing 

 the Ministers of his Electoral Highness that such an appoint- 

 ment, in the person of Count Rumford, would be by ho means 

 agreeable to His Majesty, and that His Majesty relies, therefore, 

 on the friendship and good understanding which has always 

 hitherto subsisted between Himself and the Elector of Bavaria, 

 that His Highness will have no hesitation in withdrawing it, and 



* I am indebted to the kindness of Dr. H. Bsnce Jones in procuring for me from 

 the late Lord Clarendon, but a few days before his decease, copies of papers from the 

 Foreign Office relating to this incident. 



