Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 73.djvu/45

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On the opposite side is the following:

 Rumford, the friend of mankind, by genius, taste and love inspired, changed this once desert place into what thou now beholdest.

His health being impaired, he spent more than a year in Italy, and then returned to England after an absence of eleven years. On entering London he met with a terrible loss, which he never ceased to bemoan. While passing St. Paul's churchyard in the evening, his postchaise was stopped and a trunk containing all his private papers was cut from its fastenings and stolen. He said: "By this cruel robbery, I have been deprived of the fruits of the labor of my whole life and have lost all that I hold most valuable."

Rumford's wife had died in 1792 and his daughter, who was an