624 Life of Count Rumford. 



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splendid mansion in Paris, and a very fine landed estate and 

 agricultural establishment in its environs. He ceased to attend 

 the sittings of the National Institute ; but for the Perpetual 

 Secretary, Cuvier, a man as morally estimable as his talents are 

 superior to his French fellow-members, he always preserved the 

 highest admiration and esteem. 



"One object of his later occupations was a work not yet 

 finished, though it has been constantly going on for more than 

 twenty years On the Nature and Effects of Order, which, 

 had he been spared to finish it, would probably have been one 

 of the most valuable presents ever made to domestic society. 

 No man in all his habits had more the spirit of order ; every- 

 thing was classed ; no object was ever allowed to remain an 

 instant out of its place the moment he had done with it, and 

 he was never behind his time in an appointment a single in- 

 stant. 



" He was also latterly employed on a series of experiments. on 

 the propagation of heat in solids. He had by him several 

 unpublished works, particularly one of considerable interest on 

 Meteorolites, in which he demonstrated that they came from 

 regions beyond the atmosphere of the earth. He has left several 

 memoirs in French (of which he had a few copies printed for 

 the use of his friends) on the quantity of heat obtained by the 

 combustion of various substances and the relative quantity of 

 light from others, with a description of different improvements 

 in the construction of lamps, which he had the satisfaction of 

 seeing very generally adopted in Paris. His admirable paper 

 On the Advantages of Broad Wheels to Carriages is well 

 known. He put this in practice in his own chariot ; but, though 

 there could be no doubt of their advantages, they were not used 

 by others, the Count's being the only carriage in Paris that had 

 them. Nor did any one follow (which is not to be wondered 

 at) his whimsical winter dress, which was entirely white, even 

 his hat. This he adopted agreeably to the law of nature, that 

 more heated rays are thrown from a dark body than from a 

 light one. I do not know whether his very simple, and I may 

 add perfect, calorimeter is known in England. The apparatus 



