looking over a Latin Testament, that I understood more of that language than I had imagined, which encouraged me to apply myself again to the study of it; and I met with the more success, as those preceding languages had greatly smoothed my way.”

In 1736 he was chosen clerk of the general assembly, and being soon after appointed deputy postmaster for the state, he turned his thoughts to public affairs, beginning, however, as he says, with small matters. He first occupied himself in improving the city watch; then suggested and promoted the establishment of a fireinsurance company; and afterwards exerted himself in organizing a philosophical society, an academy for the education of youth, and a militia for the defence of the province. In short, every part of the civil government, as he tells us, and almost at the same time, imposed some duty upon him. "The governor,” he says, "put me into the commission of the peace; the corporation of the city chose me one of the common council, and soon after alderman; and the citizens at large elected me a burgess to represent them in assembly. This latter station was the more agreable to me, as I grew at length tired with sitting there to hear the debates, in which, as clerk, I could take no part, and which were often so uninteresting that I was induced to amuse myself with making magic squares or circles, or any thing to avoid weariness; and I conceived my becoming a member would enlarge my power of doing good. I would not, however, insinuate that my ambition was not flattered by all these promotions,—it certainly was: for, considering my low beginning, they were great things to me; and they were still more pleasing as being so many spontaneous testimonies of the public good opinion, and by me entirely unsolicited.”

It is time, however, that we should introduce this extraordinary man to our readers in a new character. A much more important part in civil affairs than any he had yet acted was in reserve for him. He lived to attract to himself on the theatre of politics, the eyes, not of his own countrymen only, but of the whole civilized world; and to be a principal agent in the production of events as mighty in themselves, and as pregnant with mighty consequences, as any belonging to modern history. But our immediate object is to exhibit a portrait of the diligent student, and of the acute and patient philosopher. We have now to speak of Franklin's famous electrical discoveries. Of these discoveries we cannot, of course, here attempt to give any thing more than a very general account. But we shall endeavor to make our statement as intelligible as possible, even to those to whom the subject is new.

The term electricity is derived from electron, the Greek name for amber, which was known, even in ancient times, to be capable

of acquiring, by being rubbed, the curious property of attracting very light bodies, such as small bits of paper, when brought near to them. This virtue was thought to be peculiar to the substance in question, and one or two others, down to the close of the sixteenth century, when William Gilbert, a physician of London, announced for the first time, in his Latin treatise on the magnet, that it belonged equally to the diamond and many other precious stones; to glass, sulphur, sealing wax, rosin, and a variety of other subIt is from this period that we are to date the birth of the science of Electricity, which, however, continued in its infancy for above a century, and could hardly, indeed, be said to consist of any thing more than a collection of unsystematized and ill-understood facts, until it attracted the attention of Franklin.

stances.

Among the facts, however, that had been discovered in this interval, the following were the most important. In the first place, the list of the substances capable of being excited by friction to a manifestation of electric virtue, was considerably extended. It was also found that the bodies which had been attracted by the excited substance were immediately after as forcibly repelled by it, and could not be again attracted until they had touched a third body. Other phenomena, too, besides those of attraction and repulsion, were found to take place when the body excited was one of sufficient magnitude. If any other body, not capable of being excited, such as the human hand or a rod of metal, was presented to it, a slight sound would be produced, which, if the experiment was performed in a dark room, would be accompanied with a momentary light. Lastly, it was discovered that the electric virtue might be imparted to bodies not capable of being themselves excited, by making such a body, when insulated, that is to say, separated from all other bodies of the same class by the intervention of one capable of excitation, act either as the rubber of the excited body, or as the drawer of a succession of sparks from it, in the manner that has just been described. It was said, in either of these cases, to be electrified; and it was found that if it was touched, or even closely approached, when in this state, by any other body, in like manner incapable of being excited by friction, a pretty loud report would take place, accompanied, if either body were susceptible of feeling, with a slight sensation of pain at the point of contact, and which would instantly restore the electrified body to its usual and natural condition.

In consequence of its thus appearing that all those bodies, and only those, which could not be themselves excited, might in this manner have electricity, as it were, transferred to them, they were designated conductors, as well as non-electrics: while all electrics,

on the other hand, were also called non-conductors. It is proper, however, that the reader should be aware, that of the various substances in nature, none, strictly speaking, belong exclusively to either of these classes; the truth being merely, that different bodies admit the passage of the electric influence with extremely different degrees of facility, and that those which transmit it readily are called conductors, the metals, and fluids, and living animals particularly belonging to this class; while such as resist its passage, or permit it only with extreme reluctance,―among which are amber, sulphur, wax, glass, and silk, are described by the opposite denomination.

The beginning of the year 1746 is memorable in the annals of electricity for the accidental discovery of the possibility of accumulating large quantities of the electric fluid, by means of what was called the Leyden jar, or phial. M. Cuneus, of that city, happened one day, while repeating some experiments which had been originally suggested by M. Von Kleist, Dean of the Cathedral in Camin, to hold in one hand a glass vessel, nearly full of water, into which he had been sending a charge from an electrical machine, by means of a wire dipped into it, and communicating with the prime conductor, or insulated non-electric, exposed in the manner we have already mentioned to the action of the excited cylinder. He was greatly surprised, upon applying his other hand to disengage the wire from the conductor, when he thought that the water had acquired as much electricity as the machine could give it, by receiving a sudden shock in his arms and breast, much more severe than any thing of the kind he had previously encountered in the course of his experiments. The same thing, it was found, took place when the glass was covered, both within and without, with any other conductors than the water and the human hand, which had been used in this instance; as, for example, when it was coated on both sides with tinfoil, in such a manner, however, that the two coatings were completely separated from each other, by a space around the lip of the vessel being left uncovered. Whenever a communication was formed by the interposition of a conducting medium between the inside and outside coating, an instant and loud explosion took place, accompanied with a flash of light, and the sensation of a sharp blow, if the conductor employed was any part of the human body.

The first announcement of the wonders of the Leyden phial excited the curiosity of all Europe. The accounts given of the electric shock by those who first experiencd it are perfectly ludicrous, and well illustrate how strangely the imagination is acted upon by surprise and terror, when novel or unexpected results suddenly come upon it.

From the original accounts, as Dr. Priestley observes, could we not have repeated the experiment, we should have formed a very different idea of the electric shock to what it really is, even when given in greater strength than it could have been by those early experi menters. It was this experiment, however, that first made electricity a subject of general curiosity. Every body was eager, notwithstanding the alarming reports that were spread of it, to feel the new sensation; and in the same year in which the experiment was first made at Leyden, numbers of persons, in almost every country in Europe, obtained a livelihood by going about and showing it.

The particulars, then, that we have enumerated may be said to have constituted the whole of the science of Electricity, in the shape in which it first presented itself to the notice of Dr. Franklin. In the way in which we have stated them, they are little more, the reader will observe, than a mass of seemingly unconnected facts, having, at first sight, no semblance whatever of being the results of a common principle, or of being reducible to any general and comprehensive system. It is true that a theory, that of M. Dufay, had been formed before this time to account for many of them, and also for others that we have not mentioned; but it does not appear that Franklin ever heard of it until he had formed his own, which is, at all events, entirely different; so that it is unnecessary for us to take it at all into account. We shall form a fair estimate of the amount and merits of Franklin's discoveries, by considering the facts we have mentioned, as really constituting the science in the state in which he found it.

Soon

It was in the year 1746, as he tells us himself in the narrative of his life, that, being at Boston, he met with a Dr. Spence, who had lately arrived from Scotland, and who showed him some electrical experiments. They were imperfectly performed, as the doctor was not very expert; "but being," says Franklin, "on a subject quite new to me, they equally surprised and pleased me. after my return to Philadelphia, our Library Company received from Mr. Peter Collinson, F. R. S., of London, a present of a glass tube, with some account of the use of it in making such experiments. I eagerly seized the opportunity of repeating what I had seen at Boston; and, by much practice, acquired great readiness in performing those also which we had an account of from England, adding a number of new ones. I say much practice, for my house was continually full for some time, with persons who came to see these new wonders. To divide a little this encumbrance among my friends, I caused a number of similar tubes to be blown in our glass house, with which they furnished themselves, so that we had at length several performers." The newly discovered and extraor

dinary phenomena exhibited by the Leyden phial of course very early engaged his attention in pursuing these interesting experi ments; and his inquisitive mind immediately set itself to work to find out the reason of such strange effects, which still astonished and perplexed the ablest philosophers of Europe. Out of his speculations arose the ingenious and beautiful theory of the action of the electric influence which is known by his name: and which has ever since been received by the greater number of philosophers as the best, because the simplest and most complete, demonstration of the phenomena that has yet been given to the world.

Dr. Franklin's earliest inquiries were directed to ascertain the source of the electricity which friction had the effect of at least rendering manifest in the glass cylinder, or other electric. The question was, whether this virtue was created by the friction in the electric, or only thereby communicated to it from other bodies. In order to determine this point, he resorted to the very simple experiment of endeavoring to electrify himself; that is to say, having insulated himself, and excited the cylinder by rubbing it with his hand, he then drew off its electricity from it in the usual manner into his own body. But he found that he was not thereby electrified at all, as he would have been by doing the same thing, had the friction been applied by another person. No spark could be obtained from him, after the operation, by the presentment of a conductor; nor did he exhibit on such bodies as were brought near him any of the other usual evidences of being charged with electricity.

If the electricity had been created in the electric by the friction, it was impossible to conceive why the person who drew it off should not have been electrified in this case, just as he would have been had another person acted as the rubber. The result evidently indicated that the friction had effected a change upon the person who had performed that operation, as well as upon the cylinder, since it had rendered him incapable of being electrified by a process by which, in other circumstances, he would have been so. It was plain, in short, that the electricity had passed, in the first instance, out of his body into the cylinder; which, therefore, in communicating it to him in the second instance, only gave him back what it had received, and, instead of electrifying him, merely restored him to his usual state to that in which he had been before the experiment was begun.

This accordingly was the conclusion to which Franklin came; but, to confirm it, he next insulated two individuals, one of whom he made to rub the cylinder, while the other drew the electricity from it. In this case, it was not the latter merely that was