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'For the purpose of founding, under the direction and government of the Corporation, Overseers, and Governors of that University, a new institution and professorship, in order to teach by regular courses of academical and public lectures, accompanied with proper experiments, the utility of the physical and mathematical sciences for the improvement of the useful arts, and for the extension of the industry, prosperity, happiness, and well-being of Society.

'I give and bequeath to the Government of the United States of North America, all my Books, Plans, and Designs relating to Military affairs, to be deposited in the Library, or in the Museum of the Military Academy of the United States, as soon as an Academy of this nature shall have been established. The Rumford Professorship of Physical and Mathematical Sciences was established in the College by the Corporation in October, 1816, and statutes provided for it were approved by the Overseers. Jacob Bigelow, M. D., a highly distinguished physician of Boston, and a gentleman of large culture in art and science, was elected and confirmed as the first Rumford Professor, and was inaugurated on the 11th of the following December. On this occasion Dr. Bigelow delivered a most appropriate, and instructive address.

'To the country of his birth Count Rumford has bequeathed his fortune and his fame. The lessons of patriotism which we [officers and students of the College] should learn from his memorable life are important and convincing. It should teach us to respect ourselves, to value our resources, to cultivate our talents. Let those who would depreciate our native genius recollect that he was an American. Let those who would make us the dependents and tributaries of the Old world recollect that he has instructed mankind. Let those who would despond as to our future destinies remember that his eye, which had wandered over the continent and capitals of Europe, settled at last upon the rising prospects of the Western world. For one who is destined to labor in the path that he has marked out, and to follow with his eyes though not with his steps, the brilliancy of such a career, it may suffice to acknowledge that he is not indifferent to the honor that has befallen him; that he is sensible of the magnitude of the example before him; that he believes that the true end of philosophy is to be useful to mankind; and that he will cheerfully and anxiously enter upon the duties that await him; happy if by his efforts he can hope to add a nameless stone to the monument of philanthropy and science that commemorates the name of him of whom it may in truth be said that he lived for the world, and that he died for his country.

The lectures delivered by Prof. Bigelow were published in Boston, in 1829, in a volume entitled the Elements of Technology. He was succeeded in the Professorship by Daniel Treadwell (1834-45;). by Eben Norton Horsford (1847-63), and Wolcott Gibbs (1863).

The Rumford Professorship Fund was credited by the Treasurer of Harvard College in 1870 at $52,848.

Count Rumford died at his own residence at Auteuil on the 21st of August, 1814 at the age of sixty-one. M. Benjamin Delessert pronounced an address over his grave on the 24th, and Baron Cuvier delivered an éloge upon the deceased before his associates of the French Institute in January, 1815, in which he does justice to his genius in science and his eminently successful labors.

As an author, the American Academy of Sciences have erected the most appropriate monument in issuing a complete and splendid edition of Rumford's Essays and other publications with his Life, by Rev. George Ellis, D. D., which leaves nothing to desire for a full understanding of the career and character of Benjamin Thompson, Baronet, and Count of Rumford.

The grave of Rumford in the cemetery of Auteuil is marked by a horizontal stone, on which stands a perpendicular monument six feet high, six in width, and three and a half in thickness; both are of marble, on which are inscriptions-giving his official titles in Bavaria, France, and England. His most appropriate and significant monuments are in Munich-in the Maximillian Strasse, and at the entrance of the English Garden, itself the fitting memorial of his public spirit. In the Life by Mr. Ellis is a letter from the United States Consul (G. Henry Horstmann) describing the Statues and the Garden or Park:

'The bronze statue of Count Rumford stands in the Maximillian Strasse, the finest street of Munich, perhaps of any city of Europe. It is at this part four hundred feet wide, planted with quadruple rows of trees, the crimson-blossomed wild chestnut, and the American sycamore, with wide parterres of flowers and grass-plots on either side the pavement, and shady walks between, furnished with garden sofas for pedestrians. The monument stands in front of the new government offices, an imposing building in Italian Gothic, with some seven hundred feet front. To the right of this statue stands one to General Deroy. On the opposite side of the street, and in front of the National Museum,—a large edifice of the same dimensions as the before mentioned building,-stand in symmetrical positions, Frauenhofer, the astronomer and inventor, and Schelling, the philosopher, the tutor of King Maximillian, erected, as the inscription says, by his 'grateful scholar.' These four memorials are all of uniform size, the figures being ten feet, English, standing on granite pedestals of eleven feet in height. The statue of Count Rumford was modeled by Professor Caspar Zumbusch, of Munich, was cast at the Royal Bronze Foundry here, by Ferdinand von Müller, and was erected in 1867. The inscription on the front of the pedestal is:

and on the reverse:

BENJAMIN THOMPSON

Graf von Rumford.

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'Scarcely a city in the world can boast a finer park than that which owes its existence to the creative mind of Count Rumford; and every citizen of Munich feels grateful to the man through whose labor a dreary waste of pebbly strand and marshy ground has been converted into a garden, bearing on its broad breast the stateliest forest trees, groves of shady elms and beeches, with wide stretches of undulating lawns between, and enlivened with streams of water, now meandering under wide-spreading branches of overarching bushes, and at the foot of towering hemlocks, now stretching out into a wide lake with green islands in its center, and now dashing over rocks in roaring cascades, and all supplied by arms of the rushing Isar, which have been led here to beautify the spot. 'The English Garden, as it is called, is a park of six hundred acres. Its length is three and a half English miles, its breadth about one and a half miles. It was planned and carried out in 1789, by Count Rumford, at that time one of the Ministers of the Elector Carl Theodore. It was subsequently enlarged and improved by Maximillian Joseph, the first King of Bavaria, and was further embellished with monuments by his son, Ludwig the First. Scarcely more than a hundred paces from the Ludwig Strasse, one of the handsomest avenues of the city, it commences, so that a few steps bring one from the bustle and noise of a crowded street into the midst of quiet rural scenery. At the entrance from this point stands a marble statue of Youth, by Schwanthaler the elder, its inscription intimating that communion with nature freshly strengthens one for every duty. Farther on, following the carriage road to the right, is the monument to the memory of Rumford. It is of sandstone, with allegorical figures of Plenty and Peace upon its face, and on the opposite side a medallion portrait of Rumford.'

GIRARD COLLEGE AND ITS FOUNDER.

STEPHEN GIRARD.*

STEPHEN GIRARD, the founder of the College for Orphans in Philadelphia which bears his name, was born near Bordeaux, France, May 24, 1750-the eldest of the five children of Captain Pierre Girard, a mariner of reputable social position, who gave his boys, except Stephen, a college education. This son was taught only the ordinary rudiments of reading, writing, and arithmetic, and before he was fourteen, he entered the world in the capacity of a cabinboy-sailing between Bordeaux and the French West Indies-attaining with his majority the rank of first mate, or lieutenant of his vessel. He had improved his opportunity, and through the influence of his father, although he was below the legal age (25) for command, and had not served his two years in the royal navy, he took command of a merchant ship at the age of twenty-three, and with a cargo of his own, in the purchase of which he was aided by his father, he sailed again for the West Indies. Disposing of his cargo, he took in the products of the island and sailed for New York, where he arrived in July, 1774-and henceforth his lot was cast in America as Mariner and Merchant.' For two years he plied between New York and New Orleans, as mate or commander of a sloop. In May, 1776, he lost his reckoning in a fog between the Capes of Delaware Bay, in which plight he learned from an American captain, that British cruisers were abroad, and that his only safety was to push up the Bay and run for Philadelphia. Borrowing five dollars which he had not in pocket, he purchased the services of a pilot, and early in May he found refuge alongside the wharf near the foot of Walnut street—and in that locality, having taken the oath of allegiance in 1777, he found his residence and activity for nearly sixty years. Commencing with small resources, and doing any business which he could make pay, from damaged cordage and bottling wine, to small commercial ventures, and purchasing real estate in small lots, he labored on with his hands and his wits through the risks and vicissitudes of the Revolutionary War till 1790, when his property was valued at $30,000.

• Memoir in North American Review, for January, 1865.

In the summer of 1793, he showed his bravery and his humanity by staying at his post during the terrible visitation of the malignant yellow fever, when one in six of the population were swept off in the course of three months-and most of those who could leave the city fled from the pestilence to healthy localities beyond its reach. In this period for sixty days, Girard had charge of the great hospital at Bush Hill-volunteering to do so, when he knew it was ill-regu lated, crowded, and ill-supplied,-when nurses could not be obtained at any price. Here he performed all the distressing and revolting offices of the situation-receiving the sick and dying at the gate, assisting in carrying them to their beds, nursing them, receiving their last messages, and conveying the dead to their burial ground. When he left the hospital, it was to visit the infected districts, and it is recorded by eye witnesses, that this heroic man carried a sick merchant from his deserted dwelling-house to a carriage, and drove with him to the hospital. It is idle to deny to such a worker the possession of a human heart. Thus afterward, in 1797 and 1798, Girard took the lead in alleviating by personal efforts the horrors of the yellow fever in Philadelphia. Writing to a friend in France after the yellow fever of 1798, he says:-'During all this frightful time I have constantly remained in the city; and without neglecting my business, have visited as many as fifteen sick people in a day! and what will surprise you still more, I have lost only one patient, an Irishman, who would drink a little.'

But Girard's main business in life was that of a merchant and banker, not that of nurse or physician. Mr. Parton says:—

Girard was a man who sent his own ships to foreign countries, and exchanged their products for those of his own. Beginning in the West India trade, with one small schooner built with difficulty and managed with caution, he expanded his business as his capital increased, until he was the owner of a fleet of mer chantmen, and brought home to Philadelphia the products of every clime. Be ginning with single voyages, his vessels merely sailing to a foreign port and back again, he was accustomed at length to project great mercantile cruises, extending over long periods of time, and embracing many ports. A ship loaded with cotton and grain would sail, for example, to Bordeaux, there discharge, and take in a cargo of wine and fruit; thence to St. Petersburgh, where she would exchange her wine and fruit for hemp and iron; thence to Amsterdam, where the hemp and iron would be sold for dollars; to Calcutta next for a cargo of tea and silks, with which the ship would return to Philadelphia. Such were the voyages so often successfully made by the Voltaire, the Rousseau, the Helvetius, and the Montesquieu; ships long the pride of Girard and the boast of Philadelphia, their names being the tribute paid by the merchant to the literature of his native land. He seldom failed to make very large profits. He rarely, if ever, lost a ship.

His neighbors, the merchants of Philadelphia, deemed him a lucky man. Many of them thought they could do as well as he, if they only had his luck. But the great volumes of his letters and papers, preserved in a room of the Girard College, show that his success in business was not due, in any degree whatever, to good fortune. Let a money making generation take note, that

Girard principles inevitably produce Girard results. The grand, the fundamental secret of his success, as of all success, was that he understood his business. He had a personal, familiar knowledge of the ports with which he traded, the commodities in which he dealt, the vehicles in which they were carried, the dangers to which they were liable, and the various kinds of men through whom he acted. He observed every thing, and forgot nothing. He had done every thing himself which he had occasion to require others to do. His directions to his captains and supercargoes, full, minute, exact, peremptory, show the hand of a master. Every possible contingency was foreseen and provided for; and he demanded the most literal obedience to the maxim, 'Obey orders, though you break owners.' He would dismiss a captain from his service forever, if he saved the whole profits of a voyage by departing from his instructions. He did so on one occasion. Add to this perfect knowledge of his craft, that he had a self-control which never permitted him to anticipate his gains or spread too wide his sails; that his industry knew no pause; that he was a close, hard bargainer, keeping his word to the letter, but exacting his rights to the letter; that he had no vices and no vanities; that he had no toleration for those calamities which result from vices and vanities; that his charities, though frequent, were bestowed only upon unquestionably legitimate objects, and were never profuse; that he was as wise in investing as skillful in gaining money; that he made his very pleasures profitable to himself in money gained, to his neighborhood in improved fruits and vegetables; that he had no family to maintain and indulge; that he held in utter aversion and contempt the costly and burdensome ostentation of a great establishment, fine equipages, and a retinue of servants; that he reduced himself to a money making machine, run at the minimum of expense; —and we have an explanation of his rapidly acquired wealth. He used to boast, after he was a millionaire, of wearing the same overcoat for fourteen winters; and one of his clerks, who saw him every day for twenty years, declares that he never remembered having seen him wear a new looking garment but once. Let us note, too, that he was an adept in the art of getting men to serve him with devotion. He paid small salaries, and was never known in his life to bestow a gratuity upon one who served him; but he knew how to make his humblest clerk feel that the master's eye was upon him always.

Legitimate commerce makes many men rich; but in Girard's day no man gained by it ten millions of dollars. It was the war of 1812, which suspended commerce, that made this merchant so enormously rich. In 1811, the charter of the old United States Bank expired; and the casting vote of Vice-President George Clinton negatived the bill for rechartering it. When war was imminent, Girard had a million dollars in the bank of Baring Brothers, in London. This large sum, useless then for the purpose of commerce,-in peril, too, from the disturbed condition of English finance,-he invested in United States stock and in stock of the United States Bank, both being depreciated in England. Being thus a large holder of the stock of the bank, the charter having expired, and its affairs being in liquidation, he bought out the entire concern; and, merely changing the name to Girard's Bank, continued it in being as a private institution, in the same building, with the same coin in its vaults, the same bank-notes, the same cashier and clerks. The banking-house and the house of the cashier, which cost three hundred and fifty thousand dollars, he bought for one hundred and twenty thousand. The stock, which he bought at four hundred and twenty, proved to be

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