The Works of Dr. Benjamin Franklin; Consisting of Essays, Humorous, Moral, and Literary: With His Life

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General Books, 2013 - 66 Seiten
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1825 edition. Excerpt: ... The works of Dr. Benjamin Franklin Benjamin Franklin 11Y THE EDITOR. AS biography is a species of history which records the lives and characters of remarkable persons, it consequently becomes an interesting 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 Abbe Raynal, mat "America 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 exist isted 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 Shakespeare and Milton, should this reproach be still true, we will inquire fom what unfriendly causes it has proceeded, that the other countries of Europe and quarters of the earth shall not have mscribed any name in the roll of poets. In war we have produced a Washington, whose memory will be adored while liberty shall have votaries; whose name will triumph over time, and wiil in future ages assume its just station among the most celebrated worthies of the world, when that wretched philosophy shall be forgotten which would arrange him among the degene racies of nature. In physics, we have produced a fiUNKLiN, than whom no one of the present age has made more important discoveries, r.or lias ennclied philosophy with more, or more ingenious solutions of the phenomena of nature. We have supposed Mr. Rittenhouse second to no astronomer living; t

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