380 Life of Count Rumford, 



his diplomatic functions in England, it would seem 

 that his disappointment affected his spirits. He did 

 not relax in any degree his benevolent efforts, and he 

 resolutely maintained and pursued the leading object 

 of his whole eminently beneficent career, namely, the 

 making of all the inquiries and discoveries of science 

 available for the direct relief, service, and comfort of 

 the common people. It will be observed that the 

 Count refers to a publication of his in 1796, as con- 

 taining a suggestion of his first idea of his Institution. 

 As we come to read his own account of it, and follow 

 it out in its details of objects and methods, we shall be 

 satisfied that it was no extemporized scheme which was 

 hastily devised, but that it had been long and carefully 

 elaborated by a patient development of an idea which 

 he had cherished in his own mjnd for several years. 

 We may well share the surprise which he himself ex- 

 pressed, that an Institution answering, in some general 

 way, at least, to that which he proposed, had not already 

 been initiated either on the Continent or in England, 

 and that it had been left to him to set forth the need 

 and scope for it, and to win the high honor of securing 

 for it an existence and full success. 



Count Rumford had taken special pains, as indicated 

 by his letter to Mr. King, to have copies of his Pro- 

 posals for the Institution reach this country, hoping 

 that a similar plan would find its advocates here. I 

 have one of them before me. It is a pamphlet of fifty 

 pages, bearing the following title : * " Proposals for 

 forming by Subscription, in the Metropolis of the 

 British Empire, a Public Institution for diffusing the 

 Knowledge and facilitating the general Introduction of 



* It is in the possession of the Massachusetts Historical Society. 



