440 Life of Count Rumford. 



had in view of a mechanics' school, workshop, &c. was imme- 

 diately stopped. The favorable report he made of the success 

 of his work a report read after he had almost started was 

 discredited by Mr. Bernard, and I am much mistaken if the 

 managers did not suspect the accounts ' had been cooked,' so 

 to say, for they called in an accountant. Mr. Bernard says, 

 1 Upon the whole the visitors have the pleasure of stating to the 

 annual meeting^ that they conceive there is nothing that merits 

 censure, and much that deserves approbation.' But not a bit 

 of approbation do they give, that I can see. Count Rumford's 

 name never occurs in the minutes of the managers, and they 

 ought to have given him the highest praise, at least for his ideas 

 in forming l the Rumford Institution,' as I shall call it. The 

 Bernard Institution, which came after it for seven years, was 

 nothing but giving c fashion to science,' instead of l usefulness 

 of science to poor and rich,' which is my motto for Rumford's 

 Institution. But his idea was utterly beyond a private society. 

 It included everything, the industrial exhibition, the me- 

 chanics' school and institute, the association for scientific in- 

 vestigation, the club with a school of cookery, the Society for 

 the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, lectures and journals, &c. 

 All were to be in one building under Rumford's dictatorship ; and 

 if.he had had money and support enough, in three more years he 

 would have done the work. But his lieutenant, Webster, Assist- 

 ant Professor of Geology at the London University and Assistant 

 Secretary of the Geological Society, was deposed, and fashion- 

 able science began in 1803, and has gone on up to this day. 

 The support of the laboratory, and the proud deeds of Davy 

 and Faraday have saved us from being a lecture-shop for c a num- 

 ber of silly women and dilettanti philosophers,' which was the 

 character given of us when Thomas Young was lecturing. 

 When Rumford left England, in May, 1802, he certainly in- 

 tended to return. But he never says a word about coming back 

 to his Institution. He keeps up no relations with the managers, 

 nor corresponded with any one of them that I can find. For in 

 1804 he sends a sort of message through the clerk to the 

 managers, about a bill. He sends his regards to Davy and 



