He left Munich for London in 1795. He had spent the year after his return from Italy in comparative quiet. He was unfit for public business and he chiefly occupied himself by writing out the results that he had obtained. He thus made a series of essays. In order to publish these in England and to meet his daughter, who was about to come to him from America, and to recover further his health, he obtained leave of absence from the Elector of Bavaria. In his paper on Gunpowder in 1781 he said he would make experiments on the strength of various bodies. In 1797, when he had another paper in the ‘Philosophical Transactions’ on this subject, he added this note: Since writing the above I have met with a misfortune which has put it out of my power to fulfil this promise. On my return to England from Germany, in October 1795, after an absence of eleven years, I was stopped in my post-chaise in St. Paul’s Churchyard, in London, at six o’clock in the evening, and robbed of a trunk which was behind my carriage, containing all my private papers and my original notes and observations on philosophical subjects. By this cruel robbery I have been deprived of the fruits of the labours of my whole life, and have lost all that I held most valuable. This most severe blow has left an impression on my mind which I feel that nothing will ever be able entirely to remove. It is the more painful to me, as it has clouded my mind with suspicions that never can be cleared up. These essays were published at different times separately between 1796 and 1802. The two first volumes were reprinted in 1800. His first essay gave an account of an establishment for the poor in Munich; the second was on establishments for the poor in general. It contains the germ of the Royal Institution. This was 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, submitted to the public by A.B.’ Dated January 1, 1796. Count Rumford begins by saying that _no person_ shall _find means_ to make a job of the proposed establishment. That the general arrangement of the establishment and all its details shall be left to the author of these proposals, who will be responsible for their success. He engages, however, in the prosecution of this business to adhere faithfully to the plan here proposed, and never to depart from it on any pretence whatever. He proposed first to establish a public kitchen with every useful invention and improvement by which fuel may be saved.