for his grandson, barely sufficient, it would appear, to maintain him till he should arrive at an age to be able to do something for himself. In the following year, Mrs Thompson, whose maiden name was Ruth Limonds, married a second husband, Josiah Pierce, also a resident in Woburn; and the boy accompanied his mother to the house of his step-father, who stipulated, however, that he should receive the weekly sum of two shillings and fivepence for the child's maintenance till he attained his eighth year. His grandfather's little legacy seems to have furnished the means of meeting this demand.

EDUCATION-EARLY OCCUPATIONS-MARRIAGE.

As soon as young Thompson was able to learn his letters, he was sent to the school of his native town, taught by a Mr John Fowle, who is said to have been 'a gentleman of liberal education and an excellent teacher;' and here, in company with all the children of the place, he was taught reading, writing, arithmetic, and a little Latin, having the reputation, it is said, of being a quick boy. At the age of eleven he left the school of Woburn, and joined one taught by a Mr Hill at Medford, under whose care he made greater advances in mathematics than he had attempted under Mr Fowle. The only circumstance from which we can form an idea of the progress he made is the statement, that his knowledge of mathematics and astronomy was sufficient to enable him to calculate eclipses.

At thirteen years of age Thompson was bound apprentice to Mr John Appleby, a respectable merchant in Salem, the second town in point of size in Massachusetts, although at that time it must have been little more than a village. His occupations with Mr Appleby were principally those of a clerk in the counting-house; and he appears to have had sufficient leisure, while attending to his duties, to extend his reading and his acquaintance with scientific subjects. At this time also he began to exhibit a taste for designing and engraving, as well as for mechanical invention. Among other contrivances upon which he exercised his ingenuity was one for solving the famous problem of the Perpetual Motion; a chimera upon which young men of a turn of mind similar to his often try their untaught powers. One evening, we are informed, the young speculator was so sure that he had at length found out the Perpetual Motion, that he set out with the secret in his head to Woburn, intending to communicate it to a friend and old schoolfellow, Loammi Baldwin, in whose knowledge in such matters he placed great confidence. Loammi spent the night discussing the project with him, and so sensibly, that we are told young Thompson became convinced of the mechanical impossibility of his or any other Perpetual Motion, and returned to his counting-house in Salem next morning, resolved to attempt something less magnificent and more practicable.

About this time the differences between the mother-country and the American colonies were beginning to assume a serious aspect. The imposition of the famous stamp tax in 1765 had excited great indignation among the colonists, and its repeal in the following year was celebrated with proportionate rejoicings. At Salem, where the commercial interest predominated, it was determined that there should be a great display of fireworks on the occasion; and as the town did not possess a professional pyrotechnist, Mr Appleby's clerk contrived to get his services in that capacity accepted. Unluckily, while preparing some detonating mixture, he handled the pestle so as to cause an explosion, by which he was so severely burned that his life was despaired of. At length, he was able to remove from his mother's house at Woburn, to which he had been carried after the accident, and resume his employment at Salem. The renewed attempts of the mother-country, however, to impose taxes upon the colonies, followed as they were by the resolution of the merchants in the colonies not to import any of the products of the mother-country, produced such a stagnation of trade in Salem, as at other towns, that Mr Appleby, having no occasion for the further services of a clerk, was glad to give young Thompson up his indentures, and allow him to return to Woburn.

This happened apparently in 1767 or 1768; and for a year or two afterwards, Thompson's course of life seems to have been wavering and undecided. In the winter of 1769, he taught a school at Wilmington; and some time in the same year he seems to have had thoughts of pursuing the medical profession, for which purpose he placed himself under Dr Hay, a physician in Woburn, and entered zealously upon the study of anatomy and physiology. While with Dr Hay, he is said to have exhibited greater fondness for the mechanical than for other parts of the profession, and to have amused himself by making surgical instruments. How long Thompson pursued his medical studies, is uncertain; in 1770, however, we find him resuming his mercantile avocations, in the capacity of clerk in a dry-goods store at Boston, kept by a Mr Capen. He was in Boston during the famous riots which took place on the attempt to land a cargo of tea from a British vessel, contrary to the resolution of the colonists against admitting British goods. Mr Capen's business seems to have declined in the critical circumstances of the colony, as Mr Appleby's had formerly done; and Thompson was again obliged to return to Woburn. During the summer of 1770, he attended, in company with his friend Baldwin, a course of lectures on experimental philosophy delivered in Harvard College; and at no time of his life does he seem to have been so busily intent upon the acquisition of knowledge. Besides attending the lectures of the professor, he instituted experiments of his own of various kinds, some of which were the germs of valuable conclusions which he published in after-life. In particular, we may mention a course

of experiments which he began for ascertaining and measuring the projectile force of gunpowder.

Thompson, though still only in his seventeenth year, had acquired that degree and kind of reputation which it is usual for youths of his stamp to obtain among intelligent acquaintances; and late in 1770, he was invited by Colonel Timothy Walker, one of the most important residents in the thriving village of Rumford, now Concord, in New Hampshire, to take charge of an academy in that place. Accepting the invitation, Thompson, says his American biographer, Dr Renwick, found himself caressed and welcomed by a society not wanting in refinement or pretensions to fashion. His grace and personal advantages, which afterwards gained him access to the proudest circles of Europe, were already developed. His stature of nearly six feet, his erect figure, his finely formed limbs, his bright blue eyes, his features chiselled in the Roman mould, and his dark auburn hair, rendered him a model of manly beauty. He had acquired an address in the highest degree prepossessing; and at the counter of the Boston retailer, had learned, from its fashionable customers, that polish of manner and dialect which obliterates all peculiarities that are provincial, and many of those that are national. He possessed solid acquirements far beyond the standard of the day, and had attained already the last and highest requisite for society -that of conversing with ease, and in a pure language, upon all the subjects with a knowledge of which his mind was stored. In addition, he possessed the most fascinating of all accomplishments, for he had a fine voice; and although far from a proficient in music as a science, sang with much taste, and performed on several instruments.' With such advantages, the young schoolmaster appears to have made an impression on not a few female hearts in the country village where he shone; on none, however, so decidedly as on that of Mrs Rolfe, a colonel's widow, possessed of what was then considered a large fortune, and although considerably older than himself, still young and handsome enough, according to his biographer, 'to render it probable that a feeling more creditable than one arising from interested motives led him to seek her hand.' However this may be, the affair was soon brought to a happy conclusion. On giving out his vacation for the year 1772, the young schoolmaster stepped into the widow's carriage, and they drove together to Boston, where he fitted himself with a dress in the extreme of the fashion of the day, scarlet being then a favourite colour. Clad anew from top to toe, he re-entered the equipage, which whirled away towards Woburn. The astonishment of the villagers at seeing their young townsman in such a guise and in such company was past description. Why, Ben, my child,' said his mother, gazing at his splendid outfit as he dismounted at the door, 'how could you spend your whole winter's earnings in this way?' In the presence of his fair companion the youth could hardly

explain, and he was obliged to employ a friend to break the subject of his intended marriage to his mother. No objections were offered on her part, although she took twenty-four hours to deliberate on the matter; and the happy pair drove back to Rumford, where the wedding was forthwith celebrated, the bridegroom being then in his twentieth year.

UNPOPULARITY AMONG THE AMERICANS-FLIGHT TO ENGLAND.

After his marriage, Thompson took his place as one of the wealthiest inhabitants of the district in which he resided, and mixed in the best society which the colony afforded. It was not long before he made the acquaintance of his Excellency John Wentworth, the governor of the colony, who, anxious, no doubt, in the critical circumstances in which the American dependencies of Great Britain were then placed, to attach to the party which sided with the mothercountry as many influential colonists as he was able, lost no time in endeavouring to gain over so promising a man as Thompson. A vacancy having occurred in a regiment of the New Hampshire militia, Governor Wentworth gave the commission, which was that of major, to his new friend: an act of attention which, while it seems to have been gratifying to Thompson, did not fail to procure him much ill-will from the officers already in the service, over whose heads he had been promoted. From this period, Thompson began to be unpopular in his native province. He was represented as a friend of Great Britain, and an enemy to the interests of the colonies; and this charge was the more readily believed, on account of the marked kindness with which he continued to be treated by the governor, and the indifference which he exhibited to those political questions which were agitating all around him. The truth seems to be, that not only was Thompson, as a man in comfortable circumstances, and fond of the consideration and opportunities of enjoyment which they afforded him, averse to any disturbance, such as a war between the colonies and the mother-country would cause, but that his constitution and temperament, his liking for calm intellectual pursuits, disqualified him from taking part in political agitation. Many men who have distinguished themselves in literature and science have, as a matter of principle, kept themselves aloof from the controversies and political dissensions of their time, alleging that, however important such questions might be, it was not in discussing them that their powers could be employed to most advantage. In the case of Thompson, however, who as yet had not begun to lay claim to the character of a man devoted to scientific pursuits, his countrymen thought, not altogether unreasonably, that they had grounds of complaint. What employment was he engaged in, that he ought to be exempted from the duty of a citizen-that of taking an interest in public affairs? So, probably, the most

candid and considerate of the American patriots reasoned; and as for the great mass of the populace, they condemned him in the usual summary manner in which the public judges. Not a name was more detested in Massachusetts than that of Benjamin Thompson. He was denounced as a sycophant of the British-a traitor to the interests of the colonies-an enemy of liberty. To such a length did the public hatred of him proceed, that at length, in the month of November 1774, the mob of Concord had resolved to inflict on him the punishment which several other unpopular persons had already experienced-that of being tarred and feathered in the open streets. Receiving intelligence of the design of the mob before it could be carried into execution, Thompson had no alternative but to withdraw from Concord to some other part of the provinces where political excitement did not run so high. Accordingly, he quitted his wife and an infant daughter, who had been born in the previous year, and took refuge first in his native town of Woburn, from which he afterwards removed to Charleston. From Charleston, after a few months' residence, he went to Boston, which was then garrisoned by a British army commanded by General Gage.

Thompson was well received by General Gage and the officers of the British army; and his intercourse with them, while it probably gave him a stronger bias towards the side of the mother-country than he had yet exhibited, did not contribute to remove the bad opinion his countrymen had formed of his patriotism. Having returned in the spring of 1775 to his native town of Woburn, where he was joined by his wife and daughter, he again ran the risk of being tarred and feathered. The mob surrounded the house where he resided early one morning, armed with guns and sticks, and but for the interference of his old friend Loammi Baldwin, who arrived at the spot in time to use his influence with the crowd, serious consequences might have ensued.

The commencement of open hostilities between the colonists and the British troops in May 1775 made Thompson's position still more critical. As a major in the militia of the province, he would probably have acted on the side of the patriots, obeying the orders of the Provincial Congress, which had superseded the old government; but the odium attached to his name was such, that his very zeal on the patriotic side would have been misrepresented. In order, therefore, to clear himself of all suspicion, and that he might thenceforth live on good terms with his countrymen, he demanded a trial before the Committee of Correspondence established at Woburn by authority of the new power. The trial was granted; he was put under arrest; and an advertisement was inserted in the newspapers for all who had charges to prefer against his patriotism to come forward. Besides the general allegation of his being a Tory, and a friend and correspondent of Governor Wentworth and General Gage, the only charge made against him on his trial was,