360 Life of Count Rumford. 



follows the assertion quoted above, as to the solicitation 

 made to the Count to return to America and accept an 

 " establishment " by adding this : 



" The Count replied, testifying his profound appre- 

 ciation of this mark of regard, that engagements ren- 

 dered sacred and inviolable by great obligations would 

 not allow him to dispose of himself in a way to enable 

 him to accept the offer which had been made to him. 

 Certainly there is no trace of animosity in these com- 

 munications." 



In his Essay on Gunpowder,* the Count says that he 

 had sent to the United States government, as a present, 

 a model field-piece of his own construction. I have 

 sought information from the War Department at Wash- 

 ington as to any record concerning the receipt or 

 acknowledgment of this gift, or of the military library, 

 drawings, &c. which he proposed to send hither. The 

 Inspector-General, in behalf of the Secretary of War, 

 writes me in reply, that a search has shown " that the 

 records of the Department afford no intelligence con- 

 cerning Count Rumford. If any papers relating to the 

 subject were ever filed in the War Department, they 

 were no doubt involved in the destruction of the War 

 Office by fire, in the year 1800." 



The well-authenticated facts which have thus been 

 laid before the reader concerning an incident in Count 

 Rumford's personal history which had heretofore been 

 so positively stated, but yet so vaguely related, and 

 without proper vouchers, are equally honorable to him- 

 self and to those who held high trusts under the Ameri- 

 can government. 



The noble undertaking to which Count Rumford 



* Academy's Edition, Vol. I. p. 177. 



