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admiration and respect. First he was elected clerk of the Assembly; soon afterward he was appointed postmaster; and as his years increased, so his public occupations grew.

Having by the time he was forty years of age acquired a moderate fortune, Franklin disengaged himself from private business, intending to devote himself to philosophic, scientific, and literary studies and amusements. He became the founder of the University of Pennsylvania, and of the American Philosophical Society; invented the economical stove which bears his name; and still more important—began that series of experiments that resulted in establishing the sameness of lightning and electricity, and in the invention of the lightning-rod. The accounts of his electrical researches, which were read before the Royal Society of London, procured for him the honor of membership, and won him a European reputation as a scientist.

But Franklin was not long allowed to proceed with his scientific pursuits: the public laid hold of this sage and judicious counselor, and forced him into every kind of public employment, while his own disposition engaged him in all public-spirited projects. With the year 1757 begins Franklin's long residence in Europe. The occasion of his first going to England was his appointment by the people of Pennsylvania as commissioner, to petition the home government for the redress of certain grievances. Meanwhile he had obtained so much reputation that the colonies of Massachusetts, Maryland, and Georgia also made him their agent.

During the five years of his first stay in England, he succeeded in the principal objects of his mission; while at the same time he made acquaintance with the most distinguished men of the time, and received the highest academical degrees that the universities could bestow.

In 1762 Franklin returned to Philadelphia, and received the official thanks of the Assembly. New difficulties, however, arose; and he was again persuaded to represent his fellow-citizens before the British authorities. Accordingly he once more visited London in 1764. The Revolution was then imminent, for soon after his arrival the British Parliament committed the folly of passing the Stamp Act. Franklin was indefatigable in his exertions to prove the unconstitutionality and impolicy of this measure, and it was mainly due to his prompt expositions that the Stamp Act was repealed.

At the time when the difficulties between Great Britain and her colonies became aggravated to a state of open hostility, Franklin was elected a member of the American Congress. After signing the Declaration of Independence, he was appointed minister plenipotentiary to France, where he arrived in December, 1776. His success in enlisting the sympathies and substantial assistance of the French government in behalf of the colonies is well known. Franklin returned to Philadelphia in September, 1785,- at which period he had attained the advanced age of eighty years, and was received with the enthusiastic acclamations of a grateful nation. Washington wrote him in the warmest terms of congratulation.

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Franklin filled the dignified office of President of Pennsylvania from 1785 to 1788, and in 1787 sat with Washington and Hamilton in the Convention which framed the Constitution of the United States. He died of a disease of the lungs, after a short illness, on the 17th of April, 1790, in the eighty-fifth year of his long and honored life. His death was sincerely mourned both in Europe and America; and in the French Assembly the illustrious orator Mirabeau announced that "the genius which had freed America, and poured a flood of light over Europe, had returned to the bosom of the Divinity."

In person Franklin was strong and well-formed, five feet ten inches high, and of a noble presence. Even in his old age we see in his portraits the image of a venerable, benignant soul, with wisdom irradiating from the luminous gray eye, and with shrewdness, drollery, and humor lurking in the lines of the tell-tale mouth. His manners were extremely winning and affable: yet such was his dignity, that he met great statesmen and great sovereigns on equal terms.

Intellectually, Franklin was a many-sided man. It may almost be said of him, that he was "not one, but all mankind's epitome." Had he not been a great scientist, he would have stood in the first rank as a moral philosopher; his eminence as a statesman would have distinguished him, had he not been a practical inventor; and his wit would have sufficed to give him renown, even had his diplomacy failed to elicit the envy and applause of courts.

Franklin's ethical doctrines, though perhaps not soar

ing to ideal standards, are broad, human, and practical. "I have always," wrote he, late in life, "set a greater value on the character of a doer of good, than any other kind of reputation." And again, at the most critical epoch of his life, when beset with menace, jealousy, and injustice, he said, "My rule is to go straight forward in doing what appears to me to be right, leaving the consequences to Providence."

It has been well observed of Franklin, that " he never spoke a word too soon, nor a word too late, nor a word too much, nor failed to speak the right word at the right season." He was the incarnation of simple com

mon-sense:

“Rich in saving common-sense,
And, as the greatest only are,
In his simplicity sublime."

Franklin's literary works are voluminous; yet few men who have written so much have written so little that may not profitably be read. The ten volumes collected by Dr. Sparks comprise, in addition to the Autobiography, (1) Essays on Religious and Moral Subjects, (2) Essays on General Politics and Political Economy, (3) Historical and Political Essays, Tracts, and Papers, (4) Letters and Papers on Electricity, (5) Letters and Papers on Philosophical Subjects, and (6) Correspondence.

Franklin was master of a style suited to every need,—to the lucid exposition of deep subjects, to the homely utterances of "Poor Richard," to the polished fence of diplomacy, to the caustic exhibition of folly, and to the sparkling and graceful interchange of thought in the form of epistolary correspondence.

1. MY EARLY LITERARY STUDIES.

[The following is an extract from the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. This memoir was written by Franklin partly in England in 1771, and partly in Paris in 1785, and brings the story of his life down to 1757, the year in which he first went to England as agent for the Colony of Pennsylvania. The Autobiography ranks as one of the most delightful and instructive revelations of an individual life ever written, and should be read by all the youth of America. Though Franklin's mode of writing does not always come up to the standard of our rigid modern rules, his style is always clear, sparkling, and limpid.]

FROM a child I was fond of reading, and all the little money that came into my hands was ever laid out in books. Pleased with the Pilgrim's Progress, my first collection was of John Bunyan's works, in separate little volumes. I afterwards sold them to enable me to buy R. Burton's Historical Collections: 2 they were small chapmen's 3 books, and cheap, forty or fifty in all. My father's little library consisted chiefly of books in polemic divinity, most of which I read, and have since often regretted, that, at a time when I had such a thirst for knowledge, more proper books

1 collection. See Glossary.

2 Burton's, etc. The Historical Collections bearing the name of R. Burton were compiled in the latter part of the seventeenth and early part of the eighteenth centuries by an Englishman named Nathaniel Crouch.

ing of which is price, barter, — the modern meaning being at a low price. Our word “chap,” meaning a fellow, is an abbreviation of chapman."

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4 polemic divinity, theological controversies: a kind of reading much relished by our hard-headed

3 chapman: originally a mer-ancestors in the eighteenth century. chant; later a peddler. The word 5 thirst. Used figuratively: subis related to cheap, the literal mean- stitute a plain term.

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