Life of Count Rumford. 439 



contributed their services, may have found practical 

 difficulties in its administration. The economical and 

 utilitarian objects of the widest popular interest and 

 activity, which were always so prominent in the schemes 

 of Count Rumford, may have involved a too compli- 

 cated or diffusive responsibility. Possibly, one or 

 more of the men who were ready to work for the In- 

 stitution in its higher scientific directions, might have 

 been disposed to subordinate or slight the purposes 

 which the founder regarded as primary and most ser- 

 viceable. That he had variances with one or many of 

 his associates would by no means prove an error of 

 judgment or a fault of temper on his part, if there 

 were not other indications of a morbid sensitiveness 

 and irritability that had come over him at this period 

 of his life. It is certain, however, that the aim and the 

 work of the Institution were modified some time after 

 the Count was in circumstances either to approve of 

 and help in, or to oppose, the change. 

 Dr. Jones writes to me as follows: 



" In 1810, March 3, Davy gave a lecture l on the plan which 

 it is proposed to adopt for improving the Royal Institution, and 

 rendering it permanent.' This gives a general view of the 

 change which took place in Rumford's plan, but it gives no 



names I have as yet got nothing more definite except 



a statement, which I cannot find to quote, on the number of 

 enemies that Rumford made before he left in 1802. But of 

 indefinite corroborating facts there are many. The greatest is 

 that his relationship with Mr. Bernard and the other managers, 

 excepting Sir Joseph Banks, ceased entirely. He wrote to the 

 clerk of the Institution that 'he wished to hear how things went 

 on, for he had no one to tell him.' The day almost that he 

 left, his arrangements were changed, regarding the terms of 

 admission. The thing was done hastily. The great object he 



