Life of Count Rumford. 613 



apartments, the treasured memorials, in her later 

 years, of scenes over which time's changes had sadly 

 passed. These two paintings, the work of an eminent 

 German artist, verify the description and the delinea- 

 tion of the greatly diverse characters which she assigns 

 to the two ladies. The Countess Baumgarten's portrait 

 is not attractive to eye or thought. The Countess 

 Nogarola, with her sweet and pensive face and her garb 

 of mourning, fondly holds the gaze of one who looks 

 upon the canvas. I have before me nearly fifty letters 

 written in French by her to Sarah, which have afforded 

 me entertainment and instruction in the perusal, though 

 I must deny myself the space which they would fill 

 here. 



Returning from this digression, it is hardly necessary 

 to say that there was no ground whatever for the mor- 

 bid fancy which the Countess connected with the loss 

 of her father, nor was there any extraordinary circum- 

 stance attending his death. He was a lonely, and he 

 was not a happy, man. Having spent years of most 

 thoughtful, wise, and arduous labor for his fellow-men, 

 and having advanced the welfare and comfort and hap- 

 piness of millions of his race, especially of the poor, 

 the abject, and the forlorn among them, he did not 

 himself find serenity of heart, or satisfaction in society, 

 or peace in his own fragment of a home. A fever came 

 upon him which, after a rapid course of three days, 

 ended fatally. We shall see, in a subsequent notice 

 of his character and decease, a suggestion that his death 

 was the result of some whimsical notion of his own 

 about diet or medicine in his illness. But the surmise 

 was one that might naturally be ventured without any 

 positive reason or ground for it. 



