Congress, which was in session at New York, took suitable notice of Franklin's death; and, on motion of Mr. Madison, resolved that the members should wear the customary badge of mourning for one month, "as a mark of veneration due 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." In France high honors were paid. Condorcet eulogized him in the Academy, and Mirabeau from the tribune of the National Assembly. "Antiquity," said the latter, "would have erected altars to this great and powerful genius."

In his will, after distributing his property and various memorials among his kindred and friends, and the societies of which he was a member, Franklin left one thousand pounds to the city of Philadelphia, and the same sum to the town of Boston, to be put at interest and loaned in small sums to young married mechanics. The advantages which he anticipated from these bequests have not been fully realized. The Philadelphia legacy is now worth about twenty thousand dollars; the Boston legacy had accumulated in 1853 to the sum of fifty-four thousand two hundred and eighty dollars, and will reach, it is estimated, in 1891 (one hundred years from the time the bequest was made), the sum of four hundred thousand dollars, if the average rate of interest continues the same as for the last twenty years. Another donation, of about one hundred pounds, to the town of Boston, to be expended in the purchase of silver medals for the most meritorious pupils in the public schools, has been fruitful of good. The "Franklin medals' are still annually bestowed; and show that the testator could have devised no mode better suited to keep his memory green in the minds of the youth attending the free schools, to which he himself "owed his first instructions in literature."

*There is not now any male descendant of Franklin bearing his name. His grandson, William Temple Franklin, died without issue. His daughter Sarah married Richard Bache in 1767, and their descendants are numerous, six out of seven marrying, namely, Benjamin Franklin Bache, who married Margaret Marcoe; William, who married Catharine Wistar; Deborah, Wm. J. Duane; Richard, a daughter of Alexander J. Dallas; Sarah, Thomas Sargeant.

The prudential maxims, quoted or originated by Franklin in his Almanac, have given an erroneous impression in regard to his character. If he commended frugality, it was because through that virtue the "glorious privilege of being independent" might be attained. "A penny saved is a penny earned" was but introductory to the maxim, "Spare, that you may share." He exercised a wise generosity whenever he had an opportunity to enlarge the comforts or improve the condition of his countrymen. His devotion to scientific pursuits was entirely free from a mercenary anticipation. It does not appear that he ever received from them any other returns than of "empty praise;" and yet they must have involved a great sacrifice of time, that might have been converted into lucre. When he invented his stove, he refused a patent, from which he might have derived a handsome annual income, and gave it freely to the public. He sought no profit whatever from his published writings, and indicated a singular carelessness in regard to them. He was continually devising some plan for advancing the comfort and general interests of his fellowmen; at one time establishing a subscription library, and then a hospital; now forming the first fire-engine company in the country, and then a philosophical society; now introducing the yellow willow-tree for making baskets, and then the agricultural use of plaster; now establishing an academy, and then suggesting an improvement in common sewers; now harnessing the lightning, and then contriving a copying machine; now studying the best mode of paving streets, and then planning the union of the Colonies; now suggesting to navigators a mode of testing the water of the Gulf Stream, and then devising a cure for smoky chimneys. It would be difficult to give a complete enumeration of all his contributions to the cause of science and civilization. Alluding to his present of some Rhenish grape-vines to Mr. Quincy, John Adams says: "Thus, he (Franklin) took the trouble to hunt over the city, and not finding vines there, he sends seventy miles into the country, and then sends one bundle by water, and, lest they should miscarry, another by land, to a gentleman whom he owed nothing to and was but little acquainted with, purely for the sake of doing good in the world by propagating the Rhenish vines

through these provinces.

This is an instance, too, of his amazing capacity for business, his memory and resoluAmidst so much business, as counsellor, postmaster, printer, so many private studies, and so many public avocations, too, to remember such a transient hint, and exert himself so in answer to it, is surprising." The same writer says in his Diary, that when in London he (John Adams) went over Blackfriar's Bridge to see Viny's manufacture of patent wheels made of bent timber; and he adds: “Viny values himself much upon his mechanical invention; is loud in praise of Franklin, who first suggested to him the hint of a bent wheel. Franklin once told me he had seen such a wheel in Holland before he set Viny to work."

The same time given to advancing his own fortunes, that he gave to advancing the general welfare and prosperity of his fellow-men, would have made Franklin a much richer man than he ever lived to be. "Franklin, with all his abilities," says Leigh Hunt, "is but at the head of those who think that man lives by bread alone." A grosser misconception of character was never formed. No man ever did more by his example than Franklin to show the worthlessness of mere sensual, compared with moral and intellectual welfare. Rising from very humble beginnings, he early felt the worth of diligence and economy in his business. But he was never so engrossed in it that he could not give a good share of his time to literary, scientific, musical and social enjoyments, and to public affairs. Having attained a moderate competence, he withdrew from active business, and accepted employments of a public nature, the emoluments of which were comparatively insignificant. While in England, music and science were the occupations of his leisure. He invented the Harmonica, gave musical parties, and pursued his electrical studies with a self-sacrificing zeal. His conceptions of the high destiny of man constantly exercised upon him their elevating effect; and he would speak with enthusiasm of his anticipations of studying the works of the Creator in other worlds and modes of being, and of conferring with the great and good of all ages and climes.

If we take Franklin's own dry and brief account of his days of courtship, we must grant that he seems to have

been deficient in the chivalrous sentiment which we look for in a lover. In his nineteenth year he "made some courtship" to Miss Read; but, when he went to England, he "forgot by degrees his engagements" to her, and she married another. Some years afterwards he made "serious courtship" to a young lady who had been recommended to him by his friend Mrs. Godfrey. But, before venturing upon an engagement, he apprized the parents that he expected, with his bride, money enough to pay off an encumbrance upon his printing-office, amounting to about a hundred pounds. The parents demurred, and he abandoned his suit, and turned his attention elsewhere. But the business of a printer being looked on with distrust, he soon found (he tells us) that he "was not to expect money with a wife," unless with such a one as he "should not otherwise think agreeable.' The tender passion must have had little sway with him at this time, if it could thus be elevated or depressed according to the graduation of his bride's dowry. Let us judge him, however, by the record of his acts, rather than of his words. Franklin returned to his first love, and married her in spite of many obstacles; and she proved “a good and faithful helpmate.

His playful letter,* in his old age, to Madame Helvetius, in which he imagines a visit to the Elysian Fields, where he found his departed wife the mate of Madame's departed husband, though pervaded by an elegant pleasantry, has been quoted as showing that the sentiment which sanctifies connubial affection, and which would have been proof against a thought of levity, was wanting in his case. But Franklin was a humorist, and, when he gave play to the imaginative faculty, it took the direction of humorous fable or anecdote. If, as his French biographers assert, he seriously made proposals of marriage to Madame Helvetius, he could hardly have made a more gallant retreat, after her rejection of his suit, than under the cover of that ingenious apologue. Towards this lady he seems to have entertained a regard which was deep and genuine, and not without a rose-tint of romance. When upwards of eighty, he wrote to her from Philadelphia: "I stretch my arms towards you,

* See page 90.

in spite of the immensity of ocean that separates us, and await that celestial kiss which I firmly hope, one day, to give you!" In a letter about a year before he died, to the Abbé Morellet, he alludes to her as "the good lady whom we all love, and whose remembrance I shall cherish while a breath of life remains." *

With regard to Franklin's religious views, we have a very explicit statement in his letter of March 9, 1790, to President Stiles, of Yale College, from which it would appear that Franklin's creed did not materially differ from that of the Humanitarians of the present day. In this letter he says:

"You desire to know something of my religion. It is the first time I have been questioned upon it. But I cannot take your curiosity arniss, and shall endeavor in a few words to gratify it. Here is my creed: I believe in one God, the creator of the universe. That he governs it by his providence. That he ought to be worshipped. That the most acceptable service we render to him is doing good to his other children. That the soul of man is immortal, and will be treated with justice in another life respecting its conduct

*Mrs. John Adams dined with Madame Helvetius in 1784, at Dr. Franklin's, and has left her impressions of the lady in a letter to a friend, from which the following is a passage: "She entered the room with a careless, jaunty air. Upon seeing ladies who were strangers to her, she bawled out, Ah, mon Dieu! where is Franklin? Why did you not tell me there were ladies here?' You must suppose her speaking all this in French. How I look!' said she, taking hold of a chemise made of tiffany, which she had on over a blue lutestring, and which looked as much upon the decay as her beauty, for she was once a handsome woman. Her hair was frizzled; over it she had a small straw hat, with a dirtygauze half-handkerchief round it, and a bit of dirtier gauze than ever my maids wore was bowed on behind. She had a black gauze scarf thrown over her shoulders. She ran out of the room; when she returned, the Doctor entered at one door, she at the other; upon which she ran forward to him, caught him by the hand, Helas, Franklin!' then gave him a double kiss, one upon each cheek, and another upon his forehead. When we went into the room to dine, she was placed between the Doctor and Mr. Adams. She carried on the chief of the conversation at dinner, frequently locking her hand into the Doctor's, and sometimes spreading her arms upon the backs of both the gentlemen's chairs, then throwing her arm carelessly upon the Doctor's neck. I should have been greatly astonished at this conduct, if the good Doctor had not told me that in this lady I should see a genuine Frenchwoman, wholly free from affectation or stiffness of behavior, and one of the best women in the world. For this I must take the Doctor's word.”