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Sketch of the Early History of Count Rumford. 21 
well be discarded. Inequalities there certainly are, in the motions 
of the heavenly bodies; but all these are confined within narrow 
limits, and they constantly oscillate around a mean position. This 
ensures the stability and duration of the system. Many of them, in- 
deed, extend through vast periods of time, for their accomplishment ; 
but they are all the necessary consequences of the ascertained Jaws 
of gravity, and can never exceed their known limits. ‘They consti- 
tute, in the sublime language of Pontécoulant, “immense pendu- 
lums of eternity, which beat the ages as ours do the seconds !” 
Art. I].—Sketch of the Early History of Count Rumford, in which 
some of the mistakes of Cuvier, and others of his biographers, are 
corrected ; by Jonn JOHNSTON. 
Read before the Natural History Society of the Wesleyan University, June 
; 30th, 1837. 
Tue name of Count Rumford is familiar with every one who is 
at all acquainted with the progress of science and the arts, during 
the last half century. It is not however generally known, that Cu- 
vier’s Historic Eulogy* of this distinguished individual, and the short 
memoirs of him in our Encyclopedias and other standard works, so 
far at least as ‘‘they relate to that part of his life which was spent in 
America, are very defective, and in many respects materially erro- 
neous.” + 
‘My attention was first drawn to this subject by observing the dis- 
crepancies in these memoirs with regard to the time and place of his 
* Eloge Historique de Comte de Rumford lu dans le séance publique de L’In- 
stitute de France, le 9 Janvier, 1815. 
+ Hon. Josiah Pierce, of Gorham, Me., who is a nephew of Count Rumford, 
and to whom I am indebted for most of the information contained in this paper. 
The entire confidence which is to be reposed in the statements of Mr. Pierce, 
will be seen from the following extract from a private letter of his, which he will 
pardon me for introducing. 
“My father says he was half brother to Benjamin Thompson,—afterwards 
Count Rumford,—having had the same mother, and was but three and a half 
years the Count’s junior. They lived together in childhood, and my father was 
in constant correspondence with him up to the time of Rumford’s death, in Au- 
gust, 1814. My grandmother lived in my father’s house for seven years previous 
to her death, which occurred June 11th, 1811. The Countess Rumford was often 
* a member of my father’s family, and from the lips of the mother, brother, and 
daughter, I have the facts I am possessed of with regard to Rumford’s early life.” 
