Life of Count Rumford. 517 



father, when a new series of them commences and con- 

 tinues up to the death of the writer. 



Those of Sir Charles's letters which were addressed 

 to the Countess while she was in America, between the 

 dates of her first two visits abroad, are especially valu- 

 able from the notices which they contain of her father's 

 course and doings in that interval. Though Sir Charles 

 was mistaken in his surmises as to the probable failure 

 of the Count's matrimonial scheme, it would, perhaps, 

 have been better for the parties if he had been a true 

 prophet. He appears to have been a fair-minded man, 

 and his reference to his own breach of confidential re- 

 lations with the Count, while not definite enough to 

 acquaint us with the subject-matter of the unkindness, 

 must lead us to recognize in it a token of those qual- 

 ities in the character or temperament of Count Rum- 

 ford which alienated from him several who were once 

 his friends. 



For another, and though comparatively a trivial, yet 

 by no means an uninteresting, matter of human concern, 

 presenting itself in a very inartificial way in these let- 

 ters, they are of service to biographer and readers. Sir 

 Charles, as the Countess herself informs us, and as 

 possibly may be fairly inferred from his own expres- 

 sions, was once willing, perhaps desirous, to marry her. 

 Her account of his application to her father for that 

 purpose, and of the Count's way of dealing with the 

 case, has been given on a previous page. Sir Charles 

 seems not only to have acquiesced in the necessity of 

 laying aside the character of a lover, but also to have 

 willingly assumed the office of a guardian toward the 



O J i > 



Countess. She was in her twenty-sixth year when the 

 correspondence from which extracts are to be given 



