A HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



right well-beloved cousins," " our right trusty and well- 

 beloved counsellors," and so on, in the skilfully grad- 

 uated language of diplomacy. The institution that 

 had the King for patron and such notables for officers 

 seemed assured a bright career from the very beginning. 

 In name and in personnel it had the flavor of aristoc- 

 racy, a flavor that never palls on British palate. And 

 right well the institution has fulfilled its promise, though 

 in a far different way from what its originator and 

 founder anticipated. 



Its originator and founder, I say, and say advisedly ; 

 for, of course, here, as always, there is one man who is 

 the true heart and soul of the movement, one name 

 that stands, in truth, for the whole project, and to 

 which all the other names are mere appendages. You 

 would never suspect which name it is, in the present 

 case, from a study of the charter, for it appears well 

 down the file of graded titles, after "cousins" and 

 "counsellors" have had their day, and is noted simply 

 as "our trusty and well-beloved Benjamin, Count of 

 Rumford, of the Holy Roman Empire." Little as there 

 is to signalize it in the charter, this is the name of the 

 sole projector of the enterprise in its incipiency, of 

 the projector of every detail, of the writer of the char- 

 ter itself even. The establishment thus launched w r ith 

 royal title might with full propriety have been called, 

 as indeed it sometimes is called, the Rumford Institu- 

 tion. 



The man who thus became the founder of this re- 

 markable institution was in many ways a most ex- 

 traordinary person. He was an American by birth, 

 and if not the most remarkable of Americans, he surely 



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