Life of Count Rumford. ^581 



toration, amid the raging animosities and the imbit- 

 tering alienations of party spirit, Madame de Rum- 

 ford's dwelling, if it could not wholly exclude this 

 social bane, admitted but very little of it. 



" As formerly the spirit of freedom, so now of equity, was not 

 allowed to be banished from it. Not only did men of the most 

 different parties continue to meet there, but perfect urbanity 

 reigned among them. It seemed as if by a tacit understanding 

 they parted with their differences, antipathies, and rancors at 

 the door of the saloon, and agreed to abstain from those subjects 

 of conversation which had gathered animosities about them, 

 and, instead, yielded to the promptings of a spirit as free and of 

 a heart as tolerant as if they had never been drawn under the 

 yoke of parties. Thus was continued in the home of Madame 

 de Rumford, and through her sway, the social spirit of her time 

 and of the circle in which she had been trained. I do not 

 know whether our posterity will ever see such a grouped so- 

 ciety, with manners so noble and gracious, such activity in the 

 ideas and the intercourse of life, a spirit so ardently engaged 

 in the progress of civilization and in the exercise of intel- 

 ligence, without any of those bitter passions, those inelegant 

 and rough manners, which often accompany, and make unen- 

 durable or impossible, the most desirable relations This 



is the rare and charming reality which I have witnessed as con- 

 tinuing and then passing away in the latest of the saloons 

 of the eighteenth century. That of Madame de Rumford 

 was the last of them all. It closed in perfect consistency 

 with itself, without the entrance of any derangement, with- 

 out passing through any change unlike the tenor of its course. 

 Madame de Rumford had passed her life in the world, in. seek- 

 ing for herself and in offering to others the pleasures of society. 

 Not that the world wholly absorbed her, or that she had not, 

 on fit occasions, more substantial and serious counsels to give 

 to her friends, and an abounding and continued benevolence 

 scattered without ostentation among the unfortunate. But, in 

 truth, the world, society, made for her existence. She lived 



