The Royal Institution, as originally conceived, was an establishment for the benefit of the poor. It was founded at the close of the last century by Benjamin Thomson, a Royalist American in the service of the Elector Palatine of Bavaria, by whom he was created a Count of the Holy Roman Empire. Count Rumford, as he is commonly called, was a practical philanthropist and a man of science, best known to this age by his association with the present-day doctrine of the nature of heat; and to his contemporaries, by his constant efforts to apply science to domestic economy. In 1796 Rumford put forth a “proposal for forming in London by private subscription an establishment for feeding the poor, and giving them useful employment, and also for furnishing food at a cheap rate to others who may stand in need of such assistance, connected with an institution for introducing and bringing forward into general use new inventions and improvements, particularly such as relate to the management of heat and the saving of fuel, and to various other mechanical contrivances by which domestic comfort and economy may be promoted.” Rumford, as he says in one of his letters to Thomas Bernard--another practical philanthropist, and one of his earliest associates in the undertaking here referred to--was “deeply impressed with the necessity of rendering it _fashionable_ to care for the poor and indigent.” The immediate result was the foundation of the Society for Bettering the Condition of the Poor; but as regards the associated Institution, it was eventually considered that it would be “too conspicuous, and too interesting and important, to be made _an appendix_ to any other existing establishment, and consequently it must stand alone, and on its own proper basis.”