Life of Count Rumford. 417 



spect and admiration for his friend by preparing him- 

 self for writing and publishing during the Count's life- 

 time the best accounts of him and of his great undertak- 

 ings which had appeared in print. They are found in 

 that series of articles in two volumes of the "Literary 

 Miscellany," published in Cambridge, which have been 

 already referred to and quoted. 



Dr. John Davy, in his memoirs of the life of his 

 brother, Sir Humphry, gives a sketch of his connec- 

 tion with the Royal Institution as assistant lecturer on 

 chemistry and director of the laboratory, this being a 

 temporary arrangement till he should be qualified for 

 the professorship of chemistry. While recognizing very 

 fully and adequately the hopeful and promising inaugu- 

 ration of the new Institution, and the signal services 

 which have been performed through it, this biographer 

 hardly does justice to the claims of Count Rumford as 

 its master-spirit, or to his agency in bringing Sir Hum- 

 phry upon the scene where he won his first eminent 

 distinctions. Dr. Davy very justly says that the In- 

 stitution was a new experiment, engaging the zeal and 

 active co-operation of people of rank and fortune, and 

 opening a most auspicious era for general science, espe- 

 cially for chemistry, in the expansion and extension of 

 its relations. The Continent was then closed by war. 

 A large number of influential persons in society were 

 induced to enlist in the high and profitable pursuits 

 which the Institution opened to them, and they found 

 alike amusement, gratification, and practical profit by 

 attendance upon its lectures and experiments and by 

 visiting its repository of models and inventions. Dr. 

 Davy gives an excellent description of the laboratory 

 of the Institution, which was for that time very com- 

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