The Conflict between Labor and Capital. By Albert S. Bolles. Pronouncing Hand-Book of Words often Mispronounced, and of Words as to Miscellanies Old and New. By John Cotton Smith, D.D. S. H. Wilder, West Meriden, Conn. 625 III. The Last Century of Congregationalism; or, the Influence in Church and State of the Faith and Polity of the Pilgrim Fathers. Rev. W. W. Patton, D.D., Chicago, Ill. 634 Rev. George T. Ladd, Milwaukee, Wis. 660 V. Mr. Lettsom's Version of the Middle German Epic. Prof. Franklin Carter, Yale College. 695 VI. Logos and Cosmos: Nature as Related to Language. Prof. Samuel Porter, Deaf Mute College, Washington, D. C. 708 VII. Necessary Truths and the Principle of Identity. Lyell Adams, Esq., U. S. Consul, La Valetta, Malta, Europe. 733 VIII. On some of the Relations between Islâm and Christianity. Transcendentalism in New England. A History by Octavius Brooks Froth- A Philosophy of Religion, or, the Rational Grounds of Religious Belief. By "ERRATA" IN THE APRIL NUMBER OF THE NEW ENGLANDER, 1876. Page 254, line 22, for "16′ 534," read "16′ 531." Page 347, line 25, for Page 381, line 23, for "an scholar, a historian," read "a scholar, an historian." "his own autobiography," read "his autobiography." Page 388, line 16, for Page 389, line 15, for "McIlvaine, excellent in his work on elocution," read Page 394, line 20, for "what it was written aforetime," read "what was writ- THE NEW ENGLANDER. No. CXXXIV. JANUARY, 1876. ARTICLE I-COUNT RUMFORD. THERE is still standing in the ancient town of Woburn, a substantial farm house, some forty feet long and twenty feet wide, enlarged by an ell and covered by a gambrel roof whose summit line is broken midway by a large, square chimney, containing bricks sufficient in quantity for a modern dwelling of fair dimensions. It has two low stories, the upper of which is reached by steep and tortuous steps, reminding one of the remark attributed to Rufus Choate, when called upon, in the office of a brother lawyer, to admire a spiral stairway leading to a private room above:- "A man must be quite drunk to get up such a flight as that and not tumble down." - This house with its fields and pastures and woodlands, all of moderate areas, presented a century and a quarter ago, a fair specimen of an average farmstead in Eastern Massachusetts. Here resided in frugal independence, with Hannah Converse, his wife, Captain Ebenezer Thompson. He was a farmer and at times a soldier. No longer young, but not yet old, in the full ripeness of his mature manhood, he was a good type of the intelligent yeoman of his time. With him was also living his son, a young man of twenty four, and but a short time married to Ruth Simonds. These had come to supplement with fresh vigor, when called upon, that decline of strength which succeeding years were sure to bring, ere long, to the older members of the household. It was in such a family and on the 26th day of March, 1753, that Benjamin Thompson, now known as Count Rumford, first saw the light. But hardly twenty months had passed when the joy caused by his advent was changed to mourning by the death of his father. Time however dulls the edge of grief, and love not unfrequently visits more than once the heart from which it was thought to have fled forever. A second marriage of his widowed mother to Josiah Pearce, Jr., removed Thompson, when three years old, from the house of his grandfather to a new home. His stepfather received him into his family with willingness, but with the very prudent stipulation that he should be paid from the boy's slender patrimony two shillings. and five pence per week for his support until he was seven years of age. No picture of the society of this period can be considered perfect, in which the town school master is not prominently delineated. Such an omission would be almost as serious as that of the town minister or of the selectmen. Woburn was particularly fortunate, just now, in having Master John Fowle as the teacher of its grammar school. He was one of the old fashioned masters, who, "because they were wise, taught the children knowledge," and, we fear, we must admit, with a success rarely excelled in modern schools and under systems more complex. Under his instruction Thompson mastered, at an age unusually early, the studies of the school. These seemed to have awakened in him an ardent desire for loftier attainments, and, under private teachers, he studied algebra, geometry, some of the higher mathematics, and astronomy with such success as to be able at the age of thirteen to calculate a solar eclipse with an accuracy nearly perfect. This appetite for knowledge grew upon what it fed, and, as his horizon widened, his desire for still farther acquisitions expanded proportionately. Worthy Mr. Joshua Simonds, his maternal uncle and guardian, relished but moderately these aspirations of his ward. Flighty and unprofitable seemed they to him. The youth was accordingly taken from his teachers and apprenticed to Mr. John Appleton, a merchant and retail trader in Salem. But his taste for study was not thereby abated, and every leisure moment which he could command was devoted to scientific investigations of some kind. Such became, ere long, his reputation in Salem, that when on some joyous occasion the good people of the town wanted skyrockets for their celebration, young Thompson was called upon as the person most competent to provide them. An explosion in their preparation defeated his obliging effort, but afforded him some valuable information, regarding the power and properties of gun powder, he could have obtained so completely in no other way. The injuries received at this time remanded him awhile to his home, but diminished in no degree his thirst for knowledge. Letters yet extant, addressed to Colonel Loammi Baldwin, his life-long friend, and by some nine years his senior, indicate the nature of the investigations interesting him during his convalescence. On the 14th of August, 1769, he writes inquiringly to his friend: "Please to give the direction of the rays of light from a luminous body to an opaque and the reflection from an opaque body to another equally dense and opaque." Two days after he writes again : "Please to inform me in what manner fire operates upon clay to change the color to red and from red to black, &c." And still again during the same month: "Please to give the nature, essence, beginning of existence and rise of the wind in general, with the whole theory thereof, so as to be able to answer all questions relative thereto." Whether such a correspondence was deemed by Baldwin most a nuisance or a blessing we are left to our individual conjectures. But about this time still other studies engaged his attention; among which were drawing, music, French, natural philosophy, |