doubt you will share my just sorrow. I intended writing you the details of his death by M. de Chaumont, but the duty of arranging his affairs, and especially his papers, prevented my answering your last, as well as the one which your daughter was pleased to write me, accompanying her work. I have been touched with this mark of her condescension and friendship, and I beg you to testify to her my gratitude until I have an opportunity of writing to her, which will certainly be by the first occasion for France. Now, as I am about writing, her goodness will awaken me. This letter will reach you by way of England.

I feel it my duty to profit by this occasion to inform you that my grandfather, among other legacies, has left all his papers and manuscripts to me, with permission to turn them to what profit I can. Consequently, I beg you, my dear friend, to show to no one that part of his Life which he sent you some time since, lest some one copy and publish it, which would infinitely prejudice the publication which I propose to make as soon as possible, of his entire Life and of his other works. As I have the original here of the part which you have, it will not be necessary for you to send it to me, but I beg you at all events to put it in an envelope, well sealed, addressed to me, in order that by no accident it may get into other hands.

If, however, it should be necessary to assist the person who will pronounce his eulogy at the Academy, you may lend it for that purpose, with the stipulation that no copy of it shall be made, and with

such other precautions as you deem necessary. The foreign representatives of our government have not yet been named. It is possible I may be one, which would put me in the way to assist in the publication of my grandfather's works; but even if they think no more of me, it is very probable that I shall conclude to go to Europe, inasmuch as I am persuaded I can derive more advantage from the publication in England or in France than in this country.

Adieu, for the present. In two or three weeks I hope to be able to write to you directly, as well as to my other friends, male and female, in France. Love me, my dear friend. I have more need than ever of your friendship.

W. T. FRANKLIN.'

I This letter was written in French. For the original see Bigelow's Life of Franklin, Vol. III., p. 465.

More than a month elapsed before William Temple Franklin announced the decease of his grandfather to their old friend, Le Veillard. It is difficult, even at this late day, to read with composure the excuses which he then assigned in the letter above for omitting all details of the last illness of his illustrious relative. This young man appears nowhere to so little advantage as in his utter inability to comprehend the nature and magnitude of his inheritance.

The mortal remains of Dr. Franklin were interred in the cemetery of Christ Church, in Philadelphia, beside those of his wife, on the 21st day of April, 1790. A plain marble slab covers the two graves, pursuant to the directions of his will, with no other inscription than their names and the year of his decease.

No funeral in America had ever before been so numerously attended, and no customary testimonial of respect for the most illustrious dead was lacking on this occasion. Dr. Smith, provost of the College of Philadelphia, and David Rittenhouse, one of its members, were selected by the Philosophical Society to prepare a suitable tribute to its founder, and President Stiles interpreted the sentiments of the collegiate institutions of the city in a Latin eulogy. On motion of Mr. Madison, it was unanimously resolved by Congress, then sitting in New York, "that the members should wear the customary badge

MDLXXXVI

FRANKLIN'S LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT

I, Benjamin Franklin, of Philadelphia, printer, late Minister Plenipotentiary from the United States

of mourning for one month, as a mark of due veneration to the memory of a citizen whose native genius was not more an ornament to human nature than his various exertions of it have been precious to science, to freedom, and to his country."

A more unusual, if not more flattering, homage was paid to the memory of the deceased by the National Assembly of France.

On the morning after the news reached Paris, June 11th, Mirabeau rose and addressed the Assembly as follows:

"Franklin is dead!

"The genius, which gave freedom to America, and scattered torrents of light upon Europe, is returned to the bosom of the Divinity. "The sage, whom two worlds claim; the man, disputed by the history of the sciences and the history of empires, holds, most undoubtedly, an elevated rank among the human species.

"Political cabinets have but too long notified the death of those who were never great but in their funeral orations; the etiquette of courts has but too long sanctioned hypocritical grief. Nations ought only to mourn for their benefactors; the representatives of free men ought never to recommend any other than the heroes of humanity to their homage.

"The Congress hath ordered a general mourning for one month throughout the fourteen confederated States, on account of the death of Franklin; and America hath thus acquitted her tribute of admiration in behalf of one of the fathers of her Constitution.

"Would it not be worthy of you, fellow-legislators, to unite yourselves in this religious act, to participate in this homage rendered in the face of the universe to the rights of man, and to the philosopher who has so eminently propagated the conquest of them throughout the world?

"Antiquity would have elevated altars to that mortal, who for the advantage of the human race, embracing both heaven and earth in his vast and extensive mind, knew how to subdue thunder and tyranny.

"Enlightened and free, Europe at least owes its remembrance and its regret to one of the greatest men who has ever served the cause of philosophy and of liberty.

"I propose, that a decree do now pass, enacting, that the National

of America to the Court of France, now President of the State of Pennsylvania, do make and declare my last will and testament as follows.

To my son, William Franklin, late Governor of the Jerseys, I give and devise all the lands I hold or

Assembly shall wear mourning during three days for Benjamin Franklin."

La Rochefoucauld and Lafayette rose immediately to second the motion of the orator, which was adopted by acclamation. It was further resolved that the discourse of Mirabeau should be printed, and that the President of the Assembly, the Abbé Sieyes, should address a letter of condolence to the Congress of the United States.

"The name of Benjamin Franklin," said President Sieyès, in fulfilling the instructions of the Assembly, "will be immortal in the records of freedom and philosophy; but it is more particularly dear to a country where, conducted by the most sublime mission, this venerable man knew how very soon to acquire an infinite number of friends and admirers, as well by the simplicity and sweetness of his manners, as by the purity of his principles, the extent of his knowledge, and the charms of his mind."

To this letter, in compliance with the instructions of Congress, President Washington sent a reply, in which he said that "so peculiar and so signal an expression of the esteem of so respectable a body for a citizen of the United States, whose eminent and patriotic services are indelibly engraved on the minds of his countrymen, cannot fail to be appreciated by them as it ought to be."

Two days after the decree of the National Assembly, M. de la Rochefoucauld read to the "Society of 1789" a paper on the Life and Character of Franklin. The Commune of Paris also ordered a celebration in his honor, and invited the Abbé Fauchet to deliver a eulogy of the deceased, of which they sent twenty-six copies to Congress. Condorcet pronounced an elaborate eulogy also before the Académie des Sciences, on the 13th November. The printers of Paris testified their sense of the loss their calling had sustained by assembling in a large hall, in presence of a column surmounted by a bust of Franklin, with a civic crown upon his head, and surrounded by printers, cases, types, press, etc. And while one of their number delivered a eulogy, they printed it on the spot, and delivered copies of it to the vast concourse attracted by the occasion.

The city of Passy, then a suburb, but now one of the most attractive parts of the city of Paris, testified its respect for Franklin's memory by giving his name to one of its principal streets within less than a

have a right to, in the province of Nova Scotia, to hold to him, his heirs, and assigns forever. I also give to him all my books and papers, which he has in his possession, and all debts standing against him on my account books, willing that no payment for, year after his decease, the impulse, no doubt, of his old friend, Le Veillard, who was then Mayor of that place. The motives for this step are officially set forth in the following extract from the official register, which was kindly furnished the editor by the custodian des Archives de la Bibliothèque et des Travaux historiques, at the Hôtel de Ville, of Paris, in 1866:

"On Saturday, the third of September, of the year seventeen hundred and ninety-one, at seven o'clock in the morning.

"The council-general offers no opposition to the execution of the decree relating to the inscriptions of the names of the streets, while observing that the old denominations be followed, with the exception of that running from the Grand Rue to the heretofore barrier of the Ladies of St. Mary, which not yet having received any name shall bear that of Franklin, in perpetual remembrance to the inhabitants of this municipality of the long sojourn of that eminent man in this parish."

As the register from which the foregoing is an extract was destroyed with the Hôtel de Ville in 1871, and as there is probably no other record of this interesting deliberation now in existence, save that from which I quote, I need offer no apology for giving the authenticated record at length in these pages.

Secrétariat général, 3e Section 3e Bureau.

PRÉFECTURE DU DÉPARTEMENT de la Seine

Exposé des motifs qui ont fait donner le nom de Franklin à une des rues de la commune de Passy

D'un régistre déposé aux archives de la Préfecture de la Seine, contenant les déliberations du Conseil général de la commune de Passy et portant au commencement la date du 3 Juillet 1791, a été extrait ce qui suit:

L'an mil sept quatre-vingt-onze, le samedi trois Septembre sept heures de relevée. . . . Le Conseil général ne s'oppose pas à ce que l'arrêt relatif au jour pris pour la perception et celui relatif aux inscriptions des noms de rues soient exécutés, en observant à l'égard des rues, que les anciennes dénominations soient suivies, à l'exception de celle allant de la grande rue à la cydevant Barrière des Dames SainteMarie, laquelle, n'ayant point encore de nom, portera celui de Franklin,