In this truly great man every thing seems to concur that goes towards the constitution of exalted merit. First, he was the architect of his own fortune. Born in the humblest station, he raised himself by his talents and his industry, first to the place in society which may be attained with the help only of ordinary abilities, great application, and good luck; but next to the loftier heights which a daring and happy genius alone can scale; and the poor printer's boy, who, at one period of his life, had no covering to shelter his head from the dews of night, rent in twain the proud dominion of England, and lived to be the embassador of a Commonwealth which he had formed at the court of the haughty monarchs of France, who had been his allies.

Then he had been tried by prosperity as well as adverse fortune, and had passed unhurt through the perils of both. No ordinary apprentice, no common-place journeyman, ever laid the foundations of his independence in habits of industry and temperance more deep than he did, whose genius was afterward to rank him with the Galileos and Newtons of the Old World. No patrician, born to shine in courts, or assist at the councils of monarchs, ever bore his honors in a lofty station more easily, or was less spoiled by the enjoyment of them, than this common workman did when negotiating with royal representatives, or caressed by all the beauty and fashion of the most brilliant court in Europe.

Again, he was self-taught in all he knew. His hours of study were stolen from those of sleep and of meals, or gained by some ingenious contrivance for reading while the work of daily calling went on. Assisted by none of the helps which affluence tenders to the studies of the rich, he had to supply the place of tutors by redoubled diligence, and of commentaries by repeated perusal. Nay, the possession of books was to be obtained by copying what the art, which he himself exercised, furnished easily to others.

Next, the circumstances under which others succumb he made to yield, and bend to his own purposes, a successful leader of a revolt that ended in complete triumph, after appearing desperate for years; a great discoverer in philosophy, without the ordinary helps to knowledge; a writer, famed for his chaste style, without a classical education; a skillful negotiator, though never bred to politics; ending as a favorite, nay a pattern, of fashion, when the guest of frivolous courts, the life which he had begun in garrets and in workshops.

Lastly, combinations of faculties, in others deemed impossible, appeared easy and natural to him. The philosopher, delighted in speculation, was also eminently a man of action. Ingenious reasoning, refined and subtle consultation, were in him combined with prompt resolution and inflexible firmness of purpose. To a lively fancy he joined a learned and deep reflection; his original and inventive genius stooped to the convenient alliance of the most ordinary prudence in every-day affairs; the mind that soared above the clouds and was conversant with the loftiest of human contemplations disdained not to make proverbs and feign parables for the guidance of apprenticed youths and servile maidens; and the hands that sketched a free constitution for a whole continent or drew down the lightning from heaven easily and cheerfully lent themselves to simplify the apparatus by which truths were to be illustrated or discoveries pursued.

His whole course, both in acting and in speculation, was simple and plain, ever preferring the easiest and the shortest road, nor ever having recourse to any but the simplest means to compass his ends. His policy rejected all refinements, and aimed at accomplishing its purposes by the most rational and obvious expedients. His language was unadorned, and used as a medium of communicating his thoughts, not of raising admiration, but it was pure, expressive, racy. His manner of reasoning was manly and cogent, the address of a rational being to others of the same order, and so concise that, preferring decision to discussion, he never exceeded a quarter of an hour in any public address. His correspondence upon business, whether private or on state affairs, is a model of clearness and compendious shortness, nor can any

state papers surpass in dignity and impression those of which he is believed to have been the author in the earlier part of the American Revolutionary war. His mode of philosophizing was the purest application of the inductive principle, so eminently adapted to his nature and so clearly dictated by common sense that we can have little doubt it would have been suggested by Franklin, if it had not been unfolded by Bacon, though it is as clear that, in this case, it would have been expounded in far more simple terms. But of all this man's scientific excellencies, the most remarkable is the smallness, the simplicity, the apparent inadequacy of the means which he employed in his experimental researches. His discoveries were made with hardly any apparatus at all, and if, at any time, he had been led to employ instruments of a somewhat less ordinary description, he never rested satisfied until he had, as it were, afterward translated the process, by revolving the problem with such simple machinery that you might say he had done it wholly unaided by apparatus. The experiments by which the identity of lightning and electricity was demonstrated were made with a sheet of brown paper, a bit of twine, a silk thread, and an iron key..

Upon the integrity of this great man, whether in public or in private life, there rests no stain. Strictly honest, and even scrupulously punctual in all his dealings, he preserved in the highest fortune that regularity which he had practiced as well as inculcated in the lowest. The phrase which he once used when interrupted in his proceedings upon the most arduous and important affairs, by a demand of some petty item in a long account-"Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treads out the corn"-has been cited against him as proving the laxity of his dealings when in trust of public money; it plainly proves the reverse, for he well knew, in a country abounding in discussion, and full of bitter personal animosities, nothing could be gained of immunity by refusing to produce his vouchers at the fitting time; and his venturing to use such language demonstrates that he knew his conduct to be really above all suspicion.

In domestic life he was faultless and in the intercourse of society delightful. There was a constant good humor and a playful wit, easy and of high relish, without any ambition to shine, the natural fruit of his lively fancy, his solid, natural good sense, and his cheerful temper, that gave his conversation an unspeakable charm, and alike suited every circle, from the humblest to the most elevated. With all his strong opinions, so often solemnly declared, so imperishably recorded in his deeds, he retained a tolerance for those who differed with him which could not be surpassed in men whose principles hang so loosely about them as to be taken up for a convenient cloak and laid down when found to impede their progress. In his family he was everything that worth, warm affections, and sound prudence could contribute to make a man both useful and amiable, respected and beloved. In religion he would by many be reckoned a latitudinarian; yet it is certain that his mind was imbued with a deep sense of the Divine perfections, a constant impression of our accountable nature, and a lively hope of future enjoyment. Accordingly, his death bed, the test of both faith and works, was easy and placid, resigned and devout, and indicated at once an unflinching retrospect of the past and a comfortable assurance of the future.

If we turn from the truly great man whom we have been contemplating to his celebrated contemporary in the old world, Frederick II, who only affected the philosophy that Franklin possessed, and employed his talents for civil and military affairs in extinguishing that independence which Franklin's life was consecrated to establish, the contrast is marvelous indeed between the monarch and the printer. In 1856 Robert C. Winthrop said:

Certainly, if any man of his age, or of almost any other age, ever earned the reputation of a doer of good, and of having lived usefully, it was Benjamin Franklin. No life was ever more eminently and practically a useful life than his. Capable of the greatest things, he condescended to the humblest. He never sat down to make

himself famous. He never secluded himself from the common walks and duties of society in order to accomplish a great reputation, much less to accumulate a great fortune. He wrote no elaborate histories, or learned treatises, or stately tomes. Short essays or tracts, thrown off at a heat to answer an immediate end, letters to his associates in science or politics, letters to his family and friends; these make up the great bulk of his literary productions; and, under the admirable editorship of Mr. Sparks, nine noble volumes do they fill, abounding in evidences of a wisdom, sagacity, ingenuity, diligence, freshness of thought, fullness of information, comprehensiveness of reach, and devotedness of purpose, such as are rarely to be found associated in any single man. Wherever he found anything to be done, he did it; anything to be investigated, he investigated it; anything to be invented or discovered, he forwith tried to invent or discover it, and almost always succeeded. He did everything as if his whole attention in life had been given to that one thing. And thus, while he did enough in literature to be classed among the great writers of his day, enough in invention and science to secure him the reputation of a great philosopher, enough in domestic politics to win the title of a great statesman, / enough in foreign negotiations to merit the designation of a great diplomatist, he found time enough, also, in works of general utility, humanity, and benevolence, to insure him a perpetual memory as a great philanthropist.

No form of personal suffering or social evil escaped his attention, or appealed in vain for such relief or remedy as his prudence could suggest or his purse supply. From that day of his early youth, when, a wanderer from his home and friends in a strange place, be was seen sharing his rolls with a poor woman and child, to the last act of his public life, when he signed that well-known memorial to Congress, as president of the Anti-Slavery Society of Pennsylvania, a spirit of earnest and practical benevolence runs like a golden thread along his whole career. Would to Heaven that he could have looked earlier at that great evil at which he looked at last, and that the practical resources and marvelous sagacity of his mighty intellect could have been brought seasonably to bear upon the solution of a problem now almost too intricate for any human faculties! Would to Heaven that he could have taken his invention for a mode of drawing the fire safely from that portentous' cloud, in his day, indeed, hardly bigger than a man's hand, but which is now blackening the whole sky, and threatening to rend asunder that noble fabric of union, of which he himself proposed the earliest model!

But no estimate of Franklin is probably more correct and at the same time expressive of the opinion which the people of the United States hold of Franklin than that pronounced by Horace Greeley in 1862. Horace Greeley was another Franklin, a man self-made, a utilitarian, and a public character. He differed from Franklin in degree rather than in kind. Perhaps if Franklin could have returned to earth in 1862 he would have found no more congenial companion than Horace Greeley.

Of the men whom the world currently terms self-made-that is, who severally fought their life-battles without the aid of inherited wealth, or family honors, or educational advantages, perhaps our American Franklin stands highest in the civilized world's regard. The salient feature of his career is its uniformity. In an age of wars, he never led an army, nor set a squadron in the field. He never performed any dazzling achievement. Though an admired writer and one of the greatest scientific discoverers, he was not a genius. His progress from the mean tallow chandler's shop of his Boston father, crammed full of hungry brothers and sisters, to the gilded salons of Versailles, where he stood the "observed of all observers"-in fact, more a king than the gentle Louis, was marked by no abrupt transition, no break, no

bound; he seems not so much to have risen as to have grown.

You can not say when he ceased to be poor, or unknown, or powerless; he steps into each new and higher position as if he had been born for just that; you know that his newspaper, his almanac, his electrical researches, his parliamentary service, his diplomacy, were the best of their time, but who can say that he was more admirable in one field of useful effort than another? An ambassador, it has been smartly said, is one "sent abroad to lie for his country," yet you feel that this man could eminently serve his country in perfect truth; that his frank sincerity and heartfelt appreciation of the best points in the French character, in Parisian life, served her better than the most artful dissimulation, the most plausible hypocrisy. The French alliance was worth more to us than Saratoga, for it gave us Yorktown, and it was not Gates's victory, as is commonly asserted, but Franklin's power and popularity, alike in the salons and at court, that gained us the French alliance.

We can not help asking, were poverty and obstacle among the causes, or only the incident of this man's greatness? Had he been cradled in affluence and dandled in the 、lap of luxury; had he been crammed by tutors and learnedly bored by professors; had Harvard or Yale conferred degrees upon him at twenty, as they both rather superfluously did when he was nearly fifty; had his youth been devoted to Latin conjugations and Greek hexameters rather than to candle-dipping and typesetting, would he have been the usefully great man he indisputably was? Admit that these queries can never be conclusively answered, they may yet be profitably pondered.

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I think I adequately appreciate the greatness of Washington, yet I must place Franklin above him as the consummate type and flowering of human nature under the skies of colonial America. Not that Washington was born to competence and all needful facilities for instruction, so that he began responsible life on vantage ground that Franklin toiled twenty arduous, precious years to reach; I can not feel that this fact has undue weight with me. I realize that there are elements of dignity, of grandeur, in the character of Washington for which that of Franklin affords no parallel. But when I contemplate the immense variety and versatility of Franklin's service to his country and to mankind; when I think of him as a writer whose first effusions commanded attention in his early boyhood; as the monitor and teacher of his fellow journeymen in a London printing office; as almost from the outset a prosperous and influential editor when journalism had never before been a source of power; as taking his place naturally at the head of the postal service in America, and of the earliest attempts to form a practical confederation of the colonies; when I see him, never an enthusiast, and now nearly three-score-and-ten, renouncing office, hazarding fame, fortune, everything, to struggle for the independence of his country, he having most to lose by failure of any American, his only son a bitter loyalist, he cheerfully and repeatedly braving the dangers of an ocean swarming with enemies, to render his country the service as ambassador which no other man could perform, and finally, when more than eighty years old, crowning a life of duty and honor by helping to frame that immortal Constitution which made us one nation forever, I can not place Franklin second to any other American. He could not have done the work of Washington-no other man could; but then he did so many admirable things which Washington had too sound a judgment even to attempt. And, great as Washington was, he was not great enough to write and print after he had achieved power and world-wide fame, a frank, ingenuous confession of his youthful follies and sins for the instruction and admonition of others. Many a man can look calmly down the throats of roaring cannon who lacks the courage and true philanthropy essential to those called to render this service to mankind.

CHAPTER II.

FRANKLIN'S IDEAS IN EDUCATION AS SEEN IN HIS WRITINGS.

At 22 years of age Franklin wrote his "Articles of Belief and Acts of Religion," in which he laid down his so-called "first principles;" this was his first serious effort toward self-education in morality. The principles are a liturgy and a book of prayer, and if the spirit which aniimated them be accepted as the motive of Franklin's life, it indicates the large purpose of his mind to "attain perfection in morals." The whole effort is of a piece with his notion of education; that man by self-application could attain through the results of personal experiment perfection in almost any art.

Two years later, in his "Rules for a Club Established for Mutual Improvement," (the celebrated Junto rules), he applied his principle of self education by cöoperating with kindred spirits; took the first steps toward the characteristic acts of his life, the establishment of useful relations with his fellowmen. The use which he made of the Junto, of which we have already spoken, indicates the large value which ne set upon such an enterprise. It would be untrue to say that Franklin was the founder of all the debating clubs in America, but it is not untrue that he was the founder of the most useful debating club which ever existed in this country, for the living influence of the Junto' exists to this day, and its usefulness to the country is suggested by the influence of the Library Company of Philadelphia at the present time.

Franklin applied the famous maxim of Horace that use is the law of speech, and extended the maxim so that it became to him the law of education; he learned to write by writing, and his numerous contribu

NOTE. The correspondence and miscellaneous writings of Franklin at the hands of successive editors have accumulated to ten octavo volumes, and additional letters are discovered from time to time. Each new research into the archives of the governments of France and England brings to light more Franklin letters. From the published correspondence and writings of Franklin, gathered by Sparks and Bigelow, I will venture to select passages in the writings of Franklin which record from time to time his ideas of education or which illustrate the application of those ideas. I am aware that such a selection is made at the risk of the omission of passages, which upon a larger view might appear to be pertinent, but the selection is made with the hope that others may be led to make a more thorough investigation of the subject.— EDITOR.