PREFACE BY THE EDITOR. As biography is a species of history which records the lives and characters of remarkable persons, it conse quently becomes an interseting subject, and is of general utility. It would be but fair to assert, that almost every civilized nation on the globe has, at one period or other, produced distinguished individuals in various stations of life. Mr. Jefferson, the President of the United States of America, in his "Notes on Virginia," thus speaks in answer to the assertion of the Abbé Raynal, that "Anierica has not yet produced one good poet, one able mathematician, one man of genius, in a single art, or a single science."-" When we shall have existed as a nation," says Mr. J. " as long as the Greeks did before they produced a Homer, the Romans a Virgil, the French a Racine and Voltaire, the English a Shakspeare and Milton, should this reproach be still true we will inquire from what unfriendly causes it has proceeded, that the other countries of Europe and quarters of the earth shell not have inscribed any home in the roll of poto In wat we have produceff & Washington, whose memory will be adored while liberty shall have votaries whose fame will triumph over time, and will in future agos assame sits just station among the most celebrated worthies of the world, when that wretched philosophy shall be forgotten which would arrange him 'among the degeneracies of nature. In physics, we hate produced a FRANKLIN, than whom no one of the present age has made more important discoveries, nor has enriched philosophy with more, or more ingenious solutions of the phenomena of nature. We have supposed Mr. Rittenhouse second to no astronomer living; that in genius he must be the first, because he is self taught," &c. In philosophy, England can boast of a Bacon, the most emient professor in this science the world has ever produced. The Essays of this great writer is one of the best proofs we can adduce of his transcendent abilities; and America claims the enlightened FRANKLIN, a man who has not left his equal behind him, and whose Life and Writings are the subject of the follow. ing sheets. or would be an: it will thereattention has productions as e following lettlemen in Philin's memoirs d, be consider NE 19, 1790. ndly I tare the d from him, One it. at he has ant, RICE" LIFE OF FRANKLIN. MY DEAR SON, I HAVE amused myself with collecting some little anecdotes of my family. You may remember the inquiries I made, when you were with me in England, among such of my relations as were then living; and the journey I undertook for that purpose. To be acquainted with the particulars of my parentage and life, many of which are unknown to you, I flatter myself will afford the same pleasure to you as to me. shall relate them upon paper; it will be an agreeable employment of a week's uninterrupted leisure, which I promise myself during my present retirement in the country. There are also other motives which induce me to the undertaking. From the bosom of poverty and obscurity, in which I drew my first breath, and spent my earliest years, I have raised myself to a state of opulence, and to some degree of celebrity in the world. A constant good fortune has attended me through every period of life to my present advanced age; and my descendants may be desirous of learning what were the means of which I made use, and which, thanks to the assisting hand of Providence, have proved so eminently successful. They may, also, should they ever be placed in a similar situation, derive some advantage from my narrative. When I reflect, as I frequently do, upon the felicity I have enjoyed, sometimes say to myself, that were the offer made me, I would engage to run again from beginning to end, the same career of life. All I would ask, should be the privilege of an author, to correct, in a second edition, certain errors of the first. I could wish, likewise, if it were in my power, to change some trivial incidents and events for others more favourable. Were this, however, denied me, still would I not decline the offer. But since a repetition of life cannot |