has been indebted for some new facts to the French memoirs by Mignet and Sainte-Beuve; and the works of John Adams, recently published, have supplied many interesting details, not embraced in any other biographical account. All Franklin's purely literary productions of merit are contained in the present collection, with liberal specimens of his philosophical writings, and the choicest of his letters. Much that he wrote was of merely local and temporary interest, designed to affect provincial legislation; and, though valuable to the historian, is unprofitable to the general reader of a subsequent time.
The fine portrait, forming the frontispiece, is from the painting in the gallery of Versailles, and is now, it is believed, engraved for the first time. It is supposed to have been taken some eight years before that by Duplessis, a copy of which, cut on wood, is placed in juxtaposition.