5 co Life of Count Rumford. 



tenth Essay, as a substitute for any extended com- 

 ments or suggestions of my own, that I may give 

 the reader the means of forming an instructed opinion 

 of the chief motives, the sagacious methods, the be- 

 nevolent spirit, and the actual practical work of its 

 author. We have in these extracts as candid exposi- 

 tions of himself as it is possible for a man to make. 

 If there is discernible in them some traces of human 

 infirmity in the betrayal of a consciousness of good 

 desert, or in the falling back upon a self-appreciation 

 in amends for the lack of expected commendation from 

 others, such weakness will be sufficiently allowed for 

 by the mere recognition of it. The following sentences 

 will properly give us a summing up of the matter : 

 " Whether the reader agrees with me or not, I hope 

 and trust that he will do me the 'justice to believe 

 that I have no wish so much at my heart as to render 

 my labours of some real and lasting utility to mankind. 

 How happy shall I be, when I come to die, if I can 

 then think that I have lived to some useful pur- 

 pose ! 



Professor Renwick, in his Life of Count Rumford, 

 prepared for Sparks's American Biography, records a 

 fact which ought to find mention here. After referring 

 to the Count's efforts and plans for the improvement 

 of the grates used in England for burning coal, the 

 Professor says that his principles, soon after they were 

 published, reached a degree of development in the 

 United States beyond that to which they were carried 

 by the Count himself, or had attained half a century 

 subsequently in the mother country. When the Count's 

 Essay reached New York, owing to the exhaustion of 

 the neighboring forests and the high price of firewood, 



