516 Life of Count Rumford. 



other rebukes which he had the fidelity and courage 

 to administer, asks her pointedly if she had " no al- 

 manac." 



Shortly before her death, while confined to her bed 

 and chair, and at times not wholly herself, she re- 

 quired her "niece" to bring to her the two parcels of 

 the Count's letters and commit them to the fire. Mrs. 

 Burgom informs me, that, under the persuasion that the 

 letters which related to the Royal Institution might at 

 some time have an historical value, she tried by a little 

 artifice of concealment to avert the fate designed for 

 that package. But the Countess, being at the moment 

 especially persistent and watchful, discovered the intent 

 and peremptorily required their destruction. In view 

 of what has been so imperfectly explained in a previous 

 chapter relating to the Count's breach with his friends 

 and a quarrel about the management of the Institution, 

 there is occasion to regret the destruction of that set of 

 the Count's letters, for they may have contained what 

 we have no trace or hint of in any other paper from his 

 pen, his own account of the nature and occasion of 

 the variance. The Countess's abstract of the larger 

 package, classed as " the scolding letters," is in my 

 hands, and its use, in the proper place, will afford in- 

 struction, though not pleasure. 



I have also before me a bundle of some forty or 

 more letters to the Countess, from her friend Sir Charles 

 Blagden. He was her friend, faithful, discreet, and so 

 sure of his right and duty in the case as to allow him- 

 self great frankness, and even a degree of severity, in 

 some of his communications to her. These letters 

 begin on her return to America, in 1799, and continue 

 at intervals till her second visit to Europe to join her 



