532 Life of Count Rumford. 



on account of its peculiar arrangements it was visited 

 as an object of curiosity by people of the middle and 

 higher classes. But it was not the palace which he 

 had occupied at Munich. He missed the warm and 

 devoted personal friends whom he had attracted to him 

 in that city. So he became restless, going to the Conti- 

 nent and returning after short visits, till he settled in 

 France, and then continuing the same visits to Munich, 

 when he painfully realized the change in his circle there. 

 Next to Lady Palmerston, his best female friend was 

 the Countess Nogarola, and she died from a broken 

 heart at the loss of her only son. 



The new Elector and his advisers and confidants 

 were either deficient in sympathy with the Count or 

 directly hostile to him, and there had been an important 

 change in the political relations of the Electorate. The 

 policy of Charles Theodore in endeavoring, as a member 

 of the Germanic Empire, to preserve a neutrality be- 

 tween France and Austria in their wars, had been 

 changed by him before his death, and he had become 

 the ally of Austria. Rumford is supposed to have 

 approved, if he did not suggest, this change of policy, 

 which the succeeding Elector had reason to regard as 

 calamitous. The battle at Hohenlinden in December, 

 1800, resulting in the defeat of the allies, put the Elec- 

 torate in the possession of France, of which the Elector 

 consequently became a vassal till the whirlwind of the 

 Revolution again delivered him. 



The following note of the Countess referred to her 

 again widowed grandmother. 



"BOSTON, September 25, 1800. 



" DEAR SIR, I heard by accident something as if grand- 

 mamma was at Woburn. If she is there, it would be a great 



