‘But what an insolence in me to prate, Pretend to him to open Wisdom’s gate, Who spurns advice, like weeds, where’er it springs, Disdaining counsel,[A] though it comes from kings.’ [A] ‘Here I must beg leave to differ from the Count. Although a man may, like the Count, possess _extraordinary intellect_, and though a man may be the _best judge_ of _himself_, nevertheless it is _indecorous_ to treat the opinions of _others_ with contempt. The Count’s constant assertion is, ‘I never was yet in the wrong; I know everything.’ Granting this to be true, the declaration nevertheless is _arrogant_ and supercilious.’ In the ‘Monthly Magazine, or British Register’ for May 1815, in a memoir of Count Rumford, speaking of his connexion with the Royal Institution, and of the quarrels which arose among the managers, this passage occurs: We feel it proper to state that the Count assumed the character of absolute controller, as well as the projector, of this establishment, and conducted himself with a degree of _hauteur_ which disgusted its patrons, and almost broke the heart of our amiable friend and its first professor, Dr. Garnett. And in Dr. Thomas Thompson’s ‘Annals of Philosophy’ for April 1815 a biographical account of Count Rumford is given, and the following inaccurate statement is made: I pass over his quarrel with the managers of the Royal Institution, about the nature of which I am not fully informed, though I suppose it was an attempt on the part of the Count to retain in his own hands the entire management of that Institution. Be that as it may, the result of the dispute induced him to leave London, to which he never again returned. Differences with the managers had nothing to do with Count Rumford’s departure from London. The immediate cause is seen in his letter to his daughter from Munich on October 2, 1801. He had promised the new Elector to return as soon as the Royal Institution was in order. Dr. Young states that the superiority of the climate of France was partly, if not entirely, the cause of his leaving England. Probably the influence of Madame Lavoisier had its full effect. Count Rumford left England for Munich on May 9. It is quite certain that when he left he intended to return to his Institution and his house, to his housekeeper and his servants in Brompton Row. It is equally certain that he no longer was on terms of intimacy with Mr. Bernard, who was still a visitor of the Institution, and that he kept up no correspondence during his absence with the other managers regarding his Institution except with Sir Joseph Banks. Before he had left England one month those objects which he had considered likely to bear the best fruits at the Institution were marked for destruction, and they gradually withered away.