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warning-voice, bade us beware of 'parties founded on geographical discriminations.' As yet, the sentiment so deeply planted in the hearts of our honest yeomanry, that union is strength, has not been uprooted. As yet, they acknowledge the truth, and feel the force of the homely, but excellent aphorism, United we stand, divided we fall.' As yet, they take pride in the name of the United States' -in recollection of the fields that were won, the blood which was poured forth, and the glory which was gained in the common cause, and under the common banner of a united country. May God, in his mercy, forbid that I, or you, my friends, should live to see the day, when these sentiments and feelings shall be extinct! Whenever that day comes, then is the hour at hand, when this glorious Republic, this at once national and confederated Republic, which for nearly half a century has presented to the eyes, the hopes and the gratitude of man, a more brilliant and lovely image than Plato, or More, or Harrington, ever feigned or fancied, shall be like a tale that is told, like a vision that hath passed away. But these sentiments and feelings are necessarily weakened, and in the end must be destroyed, unless the moderate, the good, and the wise united, 'frown indignantly upon the first dawnings of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together its various parts.' Threats of resistance secession, separation-have become common as household words, in the wicked and silly violence of public declaimers. The public ear is familiarized, and the public mind will soon be accustomed, to the detestable suggestion of DISUNION! Calculations and conjectures, what may the East do without the South, and what may the South do without the East, sneers, menaces, reproaches, and recriminations, all tend to the same fatal end! What can the East do without the South? What can the South do without the East? They may do much; they may exhibit to the curiosity of political anatomists, and the pity and wonder of the world, the 'disjecta membra,' the sundered bleeding limbs of a once gigantic body instinct with life and strength and vigor. They can furnish to the philosophic historian, another melancholy and striking instance of the political axiom, that all Republican confederacies have an inherent and unavoidable tendency to dissolution. They will present fields and occasions for border wars, for leagues and counter-leagues, for the intrigues of petty statesmen, the struggles of military chiefs, for confiscations, insurrections, and deeds of darkest hue. They will gladden the hearts of those who have proclaimed, that men are not fit to govern themselves, and shed a disastrous eclipse on the

hopes of rational freedom throughout the world. Solon, in his Code, proposed no punishment for parricide, treating it as an impossible crime. Such, with us, ought to be the crime of political parricide the dismemberment of our 'father-land.' • Cari sunt paren

tes, cari sunt liberi, propinqui, familiares, sed omnes omnium caritatés patria una complexa est; pro qua quis bonus dubitet mortem appetere si ei sit profuturus? Quo est detestabilior istorum immanitas qui lacerarunt scelere patriam, et in ea funditus delenda occupati et sunt et fuerunt.'

If it must be so, let parties and party men continue to quarrel with little or no regard to the public good. They may mystify themselves and others with disputations on political economy, proving the most opposite doctrines to their own satisfaction, and perhaps, to the conviction of no one else on earth. They may deserve reprobation for their selfishness, their violence, their errors, or their wickedness. They may do our country much harm. They may retard its growth, destroy its harmony, impair its character, render its institutions unstable, pervert the public mind, and deprave the public morals. These are, indeed, evils, and sore evils, but the principle of life remains, and will yet struggle with assured success, over these temporary maladies. Still we are great, glorious, united, and free; still we have a name that is revered abroad and loved at home-a name which is a tower of strength to us against foreign wrong, and a bond of internal union and harmony-a name, which no enemy pronounces but with respect, and which no citizen hears, but with a throb of exultation. Still we have that blessed Constitution, which, with all its pretended defects, and all its alleged violations, has conferred more benefit on man, than ever yet flowed from any other human institution-which has established justice, insured domestic tranquillity, provided for the common defense, promoted the general welfare, and, which, under God, if we be true to ourselves, will insure the blessings of Liberty to us and our posterity.

Surely, such a Country, and such a Constitution, have claims upon you, my friends, which can not be disregarded. I entreat and adjure you then, by all that is near and dear to you on earth, by all the obligations of Patriotism, by the memory of your fathers, who fell in the great and glorious struggle, for the sake of your sons whom you would not have to blush for your degeneracy, by all your proud recollections of the past, and all your fond anticipations of the future renown of our nation-preserve that Country, uphold that Constitution. Resolve, that they shall not be lost in your keeping, and may God Almighty strengthen you to perform that vow!

BENJAMIN THOMPSON-COUNT RUMFORD.

MEMOIR.*

BENJAMIN THOMPSON, better known as COUNT RUMFORD, and under that name identified with educational institutions as founder or benefactor, in Germany, England, and the United States, was born at Woburn, in Massachusetts, on the 26th of March, 1753. The father, Benjamin Thompson, and the mother Ruth Simonds, came from the original stock of the first colonists of Massachusetts Bay-his first paternal ancestor, James Thompson, was of Winthrop's company, and at the age of thirty-seven was in Charlestown in 1630, one of the original settlers of that portion of the town which was soon set off as a separate precinct, under the name of Woburn, Here he lived to the age of ninety-a man of worth, position, and trust-being one of the 'selectmen' of the town. Under the roof of his grandfather, Captain Ebenezer Thompson, the future Count Rumford was born. While yet a child (hardly twenty months old) his father died, and in March, 1756, his widowed mother was married to Josiah Pierce, Jr., who took his wife and her child to a new home.

In the village school of Woburn, young Thompson had the teaching of Mr. John Fowle, (a graduate of Harvard College in 1747) and later in his school life (at the age of eleven) was in the family of a relative (Mr. Hill), an able teacher, in the adjoining town of Medford. Just before he reached the age of fourteen, he elected, in the alternative of a farmer's life, to become an apprenticed clerk to Mr. John Appleton of Salem, an importer of British goods and a dealer in all the miscellaneous articles of a town store. His latest biographer (Rev. George E. Ellis) remarks on the inspection of bills made out by the young clerk, that the penmanship, mercantile style, and business-like signature, all indicate good training and an aptitude for his situation. But we have his own declaration, that his heart was not in his business, and that his ambition for a more lit

• Memoir of Sir Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford, with notices of his daughter. By George E. Ellis. Published in connection with an edition of Rumford's complete works in 4 vols. Memoir 640 pages, with illustrations. By the American Academy of Science, 1871-5.

erary and scientific career was fed by the conversation of customers and visitors of Mr. Appleton (of whose family he was a member), some of whom were then members of a social evening club, which has now become the Essex County Institute. Be that as it may, he was addicted to mechanical inventions, and under the instruction of Thomas Barnard, the eldest son of Rev. Thomas Barnard of the First Church of Salem from 1755 to 1776, made some progress in algebra, geometry, and astronomy. Such was his skill in compounding chemicals, that he was employed in making gunpowder to be used in a local celebration over the repeal of the Stamp Act. This experiment cost him dearly-the materials exploded in the preparation, and led to his being taken back to his mother's home for quiet and surgical treatment, and ultimately to winding up his apprenticeship with Mr. Appleton.

During his enforced leisure at Woburn, he was in correspondence with a young townsman (Loammi Baldwin, who afterward did good service as an officer in the Revolutionary War, and became eminent as a civil engineer) on the solution of problems in optics, astronomy, and meteorology.

In the autumn of 1769, Thompson was sent to Boston to engage in a business similar to that which he had been learning at Salemhaving in the previous winter taught a district school in Wilmington. From a journal kept at this time, it appears that while in Boston, a clerk with Mr. Hopestill Capen, a dry goods dealer, he took evening lessons in French, and practiced drawing and etchings with pen and pencil. He also enters a recipe for making rockets of different sizes, and directions for the 'back sword' exercise, and the cost of materials for getting up an electrical machine.'

Being obliged to leave Mr. Capen, on account of the loss of trade which followed the non-importation resolution of the Boston merchants, Thompson entered the office of Dr. Hay of Woburn, and in the interval of his professional reading, in company with young Baldwin, walked over to Cambridge (a distance of eight miles) to attend the lectures of Prof. Winthrop on natural philosophy. When the friends returned home, they were in the habit of repeating the experiments which they had witnessed, and trying others with such apparatus of their own contrivance. Knowledge acquired in this way, sought with such avidity, and such sacrifice of ease and comfort, digested by conversation, and brought home to practical

* Mr. Ellis cites Hon. C. W. Upham of Salem for the statement, that when he, a college student in 1818-19, taught school in a district in Wilmington, following Thompson at a distance of fortyseven years, the oldest people very well remembered their distinguished and eccentric master of the former age. Strange stories were told of certain athletic and gymnastic performances and feats, in which he sometimes exercised himself and his scholars within the walls, as well as outside.

use by actual experiment, must have been incorporated into the very substance of the growing mind.

The following entries for the disposal of his time in 1771 are cited by Mr. Ellis. Beginning at eleven o'clock at night,

From eleven to six, sleep. Get up at six o'clock and wash my hands and face. From six to eight, exercise one half and study one half. From eight till ten, breakfast, attend prayers, &c. From ten to twelve, study all the time. From twelve to one, dine, &c. From one to four, study constantly. From four to five, relieve my mind by some diversion or exercise. From five till bedtime, follow what my inclination leads me to; whether it be to go abroad, or stay at home and read either Anatomy, Physic, or Chemistry, or any other book I want to peruse.

This is followed by the ensuing account of his occupations on each week-day for two weeks:

Monday and Tuesday, Anatomy. Wednesday, Institutes of Physic. Thursday, Surgery. Friday, Chemistry, with the Materia Medica. Saturday, Physic one half, and Surgery one half.

Monday, Anatomy. Tuesday, Anatomy one half, and Surgery one half. Wednesday, Surgery. Thursday, Institutes of Physic. Friday, Physic. Saturday, Chemistry, with the Materia Medica.

When any man, young or old, thus methodically disposes the days of the week and the hours of each day with reference to systematic study and culture in pursuing various branches of knowledge, not neglectful of the laws of health and the necessity of relaxation, we may be sure that he will make, if he be not already, a true philosopher. The fact, also, that Thompson had to teach while he was himself learning, would make it certain that he would do both to better purpose. In boarding around for short periods with successive families in many country towns,—the fashion for the district schoolmaster of those times,―he largely increased his knowledge of men and things.

In a letter addressed to Mr. Baldwin in 1771, he proposes the formation of a society for propagating learning and useful knowledge by means of questions to be proposed to a certain number of persons, and each to bring in his answer,' to be entered in a book which he had purchased for that purpose. Here is more fruit from Cotton Mather's ' Essay to do Good,' or possibly more directly from Franklin's experiment of the 'Junto Club' in Philadelphia.

In the winter of 1771, Thompson taught a district school in the town of Bradford, on the Merrimack. Here he was so well esteemed for faithful services that he was sent for to Concord, New Hampshire, higher up the same river, by Colonel Timothy Walker, and offered a situation in a school of a higher grade, which would secure him a permanent position. Concord, under its Indian name of Penacook, had been claimed on its settlement by the English as being within the bounds and jurisdiction of Massachusetts. As

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