verify it, any more than that he who quoted prose or verse from Pope or Dryden, illustrative of some moral principle, must be considered as appropriating the verse as his own. Lord Kaimes simply says, "the following parable against persecution was communicated to me by Dr. Franklin." This doth not substantiate the allegation of a claim to be its author; it was communicated as an illustration of benevolence and toleration, without any other intimation. Lord Kaimes states simply by whom it was communicated, and so descants on it.

It is very certain that there were two different versions of such a parable, one of the Persian poet Sadi, and written so early as A. D. 1256; and a second, of Jeremy Taylor, published in 1674. That the leading ideas and moral inferences were alike in both, and differed only in their idiomatic construction, is indisputable, and that they both merited the regard and approbation of all good men. The version of the parable in the Bostaan of the Persian poet Sadi, is more oriental and circumlocutory; and not required to be presented here. That of Jeremy Taylor is given with a view to afford the reader an opportunity of judging on the merits of the version, said by Dr. Taylor to have been "found in the Jewish books." The version is as follows: "When Abraham sat at his tent door, according to his custom, waiting to entertain strangers, he espied an old man, stooping and leaning on his staff, weary with age and travel, coming towards him, who was a hundred years of age: he received him kindly and washed his feet, provided supper, caused him to sit down; but observing the old man ate and prayed not, nor begged for a blessing to his meat, he asked him why he did not worship the God of heaven? The old man told him that he worshipped the fire only, and acknowledged no other God. At which answer Abraham grew so jealousy angry, that he thrust the old man out of his tent, and exposed him to all the evils of the night, and an unguarded condition. When the old man was gone, God called to Abraham, and asked where the stranger was? He replied, I thrust him away, because he would not worship thee. God answered him, I have suffered him those hundred years, although he dishonoured me; and couldst thou not endure him one night, when he gave thee no trouble? Upon this, saith the story, Abraham fetched him back again, and gave him hospitable entertainment and wise instruction.. Go thou and do likewise, and thy charity will be rewarded by the God of Abraham." We shall here give the version as published by Lord Kaimes, and shall annex, in another column, a different and much improved version, which we copy from the edition corrected by Dr. Franklin, for the use of Mr. Vaughan. A comparison of Dr. Taylor's version with the first, and the improvements in the scriptural style, arrangement into numbered verses, and the still stronger point and effect given to the moral, will at least amount to this, that if it was a copy, it was a very much improved one, and in every respect better adapted to the nature of a moral apologue than that of Sadi or Dr. Taylor.

Lord Kaimes's version.

And it came to pass after these things, that Abraham sat in the door of his tent about the going down of the sun, and behold a man bent with age, coming from the way of the wilderness, leaning on his staff. And Abraham arose and met him, and said unto him, Turn in, I pray thee,

Last version by Dr. Franklin.

1. And it came to pass after these things, that Abraham sat in the door of his tent about the going down of the sun.

2. And behold a man bowed with age, came from the way of the wilderness, leaning on a staff.

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A comparison of these three several versions will show that the transfusion of the first idea, wherever it arose, with Sadi, Jeremy Taylor, or the Jewish books, that in each change the moral purpose was more perspicuously put forth, and besides the greater appropriateness of the language, the subdivision, and the entire addition of the 12th to the 15th verses, much improved, and enforced the excellence of the principle of toleration. In this view, it becomes of little consequence whence the first

idea was derived; no one can dispute the superiority of the latter version, and no one can claim it in that form as belonging to any other than Franklin. The moral, however, appears to have been thrown away on the Rev. Jonathan Boucher, who, having been a rector of an episcopal church in Maryland before the Revolution, forsook his country, and was rewarded by the royal bounty with an ecclesiastical living. Franklin has not been treated with the same virulence by clergymen generally; among his most enduring and faithful friends through all the vicissitudes of fortune, Dr. Joseph Priestley, the founder of the pneumatic system, and Dr. Richard Price, the apostle of civil liberty, maintained their uniform and constant friendship; and many of less note appear to have coveted to be numbered amongst the adherents of a man who had shed so much lustre on his country and the cause of liberty. It may therefore be fit in this place to bestow a few words on the ethics of Franklin. As Socrates was the first of whom we have knowledge in all antiquity, whose philosophy concentrated all actions, and determined their value by their utility, Franklin appears to have taken the lead in modern times, and was, during many years of his residence in Europe, considered as the founder of modern utilitarianism; and this too was the standard of his religious opinions. It was his practice to avoid disputation or controversy on modes of faith; he censured none, when they did not operate perniciously, and deemed that to be good which produced good. Like Cicero and Sir William Jones, he acquiesced without accepting the dogmas of the prevailing systems, and even conformed in his exterior deportment, and in his family, to the usages of some one or other sect, unbiassed by any. In his youth he became sceptical, but in maturer years perceived that doubt had its extremes as well as credulity; and that as the human faculties are limited, so man cannot penetrate beyond those bounds; that time, space, and the origin, or causes, or what has been called the eternity of things, are all beyond the measure of those faculties; that we judge of all we know by analogy, and where that fails we know nothing. He felt that there was a morality incident to the nature of man, inde. pendent of all that is held to be supernatural or miraculous; nature at large and her phenomena, and greatest of all, man himself, the only miracles; that the source of these phenomena was sublime and impenetrable, indicating beneficence and justice, and leading to utility in all things. All religions he considered as human; none having superiority, but as they promoted the greatest good; but the proper business of man in the world of which he forms a part, and the perfection of his nature, was the promotion of universal happiness, by the prevention or mitigation of evil.

This mode of thinking arose either out of a happy temperament, or produced it. Modesty and frankness, with a happy gaiety, were his ordinary characteristics; somewhat reserved, but cheerful abroad, playful and communicative at home; cool in deliberation, dispassionate on all subjects, the most inflexible of men under the persuasion of rectitude and justice.

Among his warmest admirers in Europe were three very uncommon men, of three different nations: Bentham, and Turgot, and Beccaria. Condorcet relates an anecdote of Franklin and Turgot.

When Turgot had determined to make some reforms upon the system of Colbert, and rescue France from the tribute to which she was subjected by a commerce which destroyed the internal industry of France, and where there was no recipro

city, the Perruquiers were at that time a privileged corporation, and it was the policy of the time to preserve their privileges, rather than have to pay an immense number of pensions, if their privileges were taken away. Franklin, speaking to Turgot on the financial point, observed: "You have in France an excellent source of revenue, may recruit your army at the same time, and it will cost you nothing; let the public refrain from frizzing and powdering their hair; the money saved will be preferable to a tax, and enable the people to pay those that are indispensable; then the Perruquiers, being without a vocation, may be embodied in a military corps, the wages of hair-dressing will be saved, and the hair-powder will be converted into provisions."

In the memoirs written by himself, we find his mind was very early disengaged from the prevailing superstitions of the day. Among the works which fell under his eye, while employed as a printer at Palmer's, in London, was Wollaston's Sketch of the Religion of Nature; and this work it was which led him to try his own mind by a severe and unbiassed scrutiny; in consequence, he composed a short Essay on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain. Of this tract no traces are to be found, though the tenor and title of the work may be very easily conceived upon a review of his moral writings, and especially the notes which he was accustomed to commit in a rough, hasty form, as if in haste, lest they should escape him; of these first thoughts and rude sketches, we have several sheets before us, and among which is the first sketch of an essay on Providence, and the original draft of the first letter which appears in the epistolary correspondence of this edition, which was never before published. If it were practicable to presen a fac simile, it would afford an example of the mode in which a few first rough thoughts may be enlarged by correlative ideas, and by progressive improvements reduced into a complete whole.

Time has done some justice, but not as ample as is due, to the character and services of Franklin. While his reputation spread among civilized nations, and his wisdom and sound discretion contributed, above all other men, to the consummation of his country's character and independence; it is melancholy to have to say, that his merits excited the envy, and often the malice, of men associated with him in the common cause. He had at one period to maintain the credit of his country at the court of Versailles, when some of his colleagues were wantonly intruding individual views on the attention of the court; at the same time he was traduced by a private correspondence with members of Congress, the substance of which found its way into debate, and formed fuel for faction: on two occasions he had deemed it necessary to signify his desire of retiring from his station at Versailles, as, being the object of a constant jealousy, he felt pernicious counteraction of his best efforts; but the good sense of a few wise and able men, such as Charles Thompson, soon counteracted those designs against him in Congress, and the Count de Vergennes, by formally declaring that he could not hold correspondence with more than one plenipotentiary from the United States, put an end to the difficulties which had been thrown in the way of the public interest. A public agent of the south at this period charged Dr. Franklin with being a Yankee!!—another of the north represented the Americans at Paris as satellites revolving round the planet Franklin !—and among the accusations which for a long time carried the greatest force was, that he obeyed the orders of Congress implicitly.

One of his colleagues at Paris, a few years ago, reviewing the transactions of that period, in which it was not easy to overlook Franklin, speaks of him in the following article, which, being an effusion conceived in a temper splenetic and resentful, affords, perhaps, the best eulogy that has been offered to the public on his character. It was published in the Boston Patriot.

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"Mr. Jefferson has said, that Dr. Franklin was an honour to human nature. And so indeed he was. To all the talents and qualities for the foundation of a great and lasting character, which were held up to the view of the whole world by the University of Oxford, the Royal Society of London, and the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris, were added, it is believed, more artificial modes of distinguishing, celebrating, and exaggerating his reputation, than were ever before or since practised in favour of any individual.

"His reputation was more universal than that of Leibnitz or Newton, Frederic the Great or Voltaire, and his character more beloved and esteemed than any or all of them.

"Newton had astonished, perhaps, forty or fifty men in Europe; for not more than that number, probably, at any one time had read him and understood him, by his discoveries and demonstrations; and these being held in admiration in their respective countries, at the head of the philosophers, had spread among scientific people a mysterious wonder at the genius of this, perhaps, the greatest man that ever lived. But his fame was confined to men of letters. The common people knew little, and cared nothing, about such a recluse philosopher. Leibnitz's name was still more confined. Frederic was hated by one half of Europe, as much as Louis XIV. was, and as Napoleon is. Voltaire, whose name was more universal than any of those before mentioned, was considered as a vain profligate wit, and not much esteemed or beloved by anybody, though admired by all who knew his works.

"But Franklin's fame was universal. His name was familiar to government and people; to kings, courtiers, nobility, clergy, and philosophers, as well as plebeians, to such a degree, that there was scarcely a peasant or a citizen, a valet de chambre, coachman, or footman, a lady's chambermaid, or a scullion in the kitchen, who was not familiar with his name, and who did not consider him as a friend of human kind. When they spoke of him, they seemed to think he was to restore the golden age. They seemed enraptured enough to exclaim,

Aspice venturo lætentus ut omnia seculo.

"To develope that complication of causes which conspired to produce so singular a phenomenon, is far beyond my means or forces. Perhaps it can never be done without a complete history of the philosophy and politics of the eighteenth century. Such a work would be one of the most important that ever was written; much more interesting to this and future ages, than the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,' splendid and useful as it is. La Harpe promised a history of the philosophy of the eighteenth century; but he died, and left us only a few fragments. Four of the finest writers that Great Britain ever produced, Shaftesbury, Bolingbroke, Hume, and Gibbon, whose labours were translated into all languages,—and three of the most elegant writers that ever lived in France, whose works were also translated into all languages, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Raynal,-were professed ad