do not know that my mental faculties are impaired; perhaps I shall be the last to discover that; but I am sensible of great diminution in my activity, a quality I think particularly necessary in your minister for this court. I am afraid, therefore, that your affairs may some time or other suffer by my deficiency. I find, also, that the business is too heavy for me, and too confining. The constant attendance at home, which is necessary for receiving and accepting your bills of exchange (a matter foreign to my ministerial functions), to answer letters, and perform other parts of my employment, prevents my taking the air and exercise which my annual journeys formerly used to afford me, and which contributed much to the preservation of my health. There are many other little personal attentions which the infirmities of age render necessary to an old man's comfort, even in some degree to the continuance of his existence, and with which business often interferes.

"I have been engaged in public affairs, and enjoyed public confidence, in some shape or other, during the long term of fifty years, and honor sufficient to satisfy any reasonable ambition; and I have no other left but that of repose, which I hope the Congress will grant me, by sending some person to supply my place. At the same time, I beg they may be assured, that it is not any the least doubt of their success in the glorious cause, nor any disgust received in their service, that induces me to decline it, but purely and simply the reasons above mentioned. And, as I cannot at present undergo the fatigues of a sea voyage (the last having been almost too much for me), and would not again expose myself to the hazard of capture and imprisonment in this time of war, I purpose to remain here at least till the peace; perhaps it may be for the remainder of my life; and, if any knowledge or experience I have acquired here may be thought of use to my successor, I shall freely communicate it, and assist him with any influence I may be supposed to have, or counsel that may be desired of me.

"I have one request more to make, which, if I have served the Congress to their satisfaction, I hope they will not refuse me; it is, that they will be pleased to take under their protection my grandson, William Temple Franklin. I have educated him from his infancy, and I brought him over with an intention of placing him where he might be qualified for the profession of the law;

but the constant occasion I had for his services as a private secretary during the time of the Commissioners, and more extensively since their departure, has induced me to keep him always with me; and indeed, being continually disappointed of the secretary Congress had at different times intended me, it would have been impossible for me, without this young gentleman's assistance, to have gone through the business incumbent on me. He has therefore lost so much of the time necessary for law studies, that I think it rather advisable for him to continue, if it may be, in the line of public foreign affairs; for which he seems qualified by a sagacity and judgment above his years, and great diligence and activity, exact probity, a genteel address, a facility in speaking well the French tongue, and all the knowledge of business to be obtained by a four years' constant employment in the secretary's office, where he may be said to have served a kind of apprenticeship.

"After all the allowance I am capable of making for the partiality of a parent to his offspring, I cannot but think he may in time make a very able foreign minister for Congress, in whose service his fidelity may be relied on. But I do not at present propose him as such, for though he is now of age, a few years more of experience will not be amiss. In the mean time, if they should think fit to employ him as a secretary to their minister at any European court, I am persuaded they will have reason to be satisfied with his conduct, and I shall be thankful for his appointment, as a favor to me."

Such was Franklin's letter of resignation, in the seventy-fifth year of his age. Mr. Jay and Col. John Laurens were aware of his intention to resign, and both of them besought Congress not to dispense with the services of a man whose mere presence in Europe was a tower of strength to the American cause. "I confess," wrote Mr. Jay, "it would mortify my pride as an American, if his constituents should be the only people to whom his character is known, that should deny his merit and services the testimony given them by other nations. Justice demands of me to assure you, that his reputation and respectability are acknowledged and have weight here, and that I have received from him all that uniform attention and aid, which was due to the importance of the affairs committed to me." Col. Laurens, too, urged the appointment of a competent secretary of legation upon whom the burden of business might de

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volve, and used his influence to secure the appointment of Franklin's grandson. He advised Dr. Franklin to send the young gentleman to America with the last remittance of money from the French treasury, in order to remove, by a personal introduction to Congress, the prejudices which calumny and his father's defection had excited against him. No, replied Franklin; "I have too much occasion for his assistance, and cannot spare him to make the voyage. He must take his chance, and I hope he will in time obtain, as well as merit, the consideration of our government."

Congress did more than decline to accept Dr. Franklin's resignation; they conferred upon him a new appointment, that of joint commissioner with Mr. Adams and Mr. Jay, to negotiate for peace. "I must therefore buckle again to business," he wrote to Mr. Carmichael, "and thank God that my health and spirits are of late improved. I fancy it may have been a double mortification to those enemies you have mentioned to me, that I should ask as a favor what they hoped to vex me by taking from me; and that I should nevertheless be continued. But this sort of considerations should never influence our conduct. We ought always to do what appears best to be done, without much regarding what others may think of it. I call this continuance an honor, and I really esteem it to be a greater than my first appointment, when I consider that all the interest of my enemies, united with my own request, were not sufficient to prevent it."

To another friend, who had congratulated him upon these new honors, and styled him the keystone of the American arch, he wrote in a more amusing strain. The compliment, he said, was very pretty, and tended to make him content with his situation. "But," he humorously added, "I suppose you have heard our story of the harrow; if not, here it is. A farmer, in our country, sent two of his servants to borrow one of a neighbor, ordering them to bring it between them on their shoulders. When they came to look at it, one of them, who had much wit and cunning, said: 'What could our master mean by sending only two men to bring this harrow? No two men upon earth are strong enough to carry it.' 'Poh!' said the other, who was vain of his strength, what do you talk of two men? One man may carry it. Help it upon my shoulders, and see.' As he proceeded with it, the wag kept exclaiming, 'Zounds, how strong you are! I could not have thought it. Why,

you are a Samson! There is not such another man in America. What amazing strength God has given you! But you will kill yourself! Pray, put it down and rest a little, or let me bear a part of the weight.' 'No, no,' said he, being more encouraged by the compliments, than oppressed by the burden; you shall see I can carry it quite home.' And so he did. In this particular I am afraid my part of the imitation will fall short of the original."

CHAPTER XII.

HIS PRIVATE LIFE IN FRANCE.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN was the American who discovered France. It has only been since his day, that "all good Americans when they die, go to Paris."* To that British contempt for Frenchmen, which appears in Hudibras, Hogarth, Smollett, and, indeed, in all the popular English literature and art of that age, the colonists of New England added an aversion to them as Catholics, and a hatred of them as enemies in three bloody wars. Franklin learned to like the French, and taught his countrymen to like them. He imbibed, also, an esteem for the French character, and a respect for the French intellect. He admired their universal politeness, and found them "a most amiable people to live with." They have some frivolities," he once wrote to Josiah Quincy, "but they are harmless. To dress their heads so that a hat cannot be put on them, and then wear their hats under their arms, and to fill their noses with tobacco, may be called follies, perhaps, but they are not vices. They are only the effects of the tyranny of custom. In short, there is nothing wanting in the character of a Frenchman, that belongs to that of an agreeable and worthy man. There are only some trifles surplus, or which might be spared.”

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For the intellectual women of Paris, he had a particular esteem. In new and in poor countries, women are necessarily immersed in household cares; and, consequently, that most enchanting of all be

* "Autocrat of the Breakfast Table." By Oliver Wendell Holmes.

ings, a woman of sense, spirit, and culture, capable of associating on equal terms with intellectual men, is seldom produced. In England, moreover, where Franklin had lived so many years, society is dislocated and vulgarized by that ponderous incubus of an aristocracy, which debauches the minds of women, and infects them with a mean ambition for what is called "social distinction." In Paris, for the first time, Franklin found a circle of ladies who could well discharge the duties of their sphere, and yet have an abundant reserve of vivacity and leisure for society, and who paid to his genius that homage which English ladies are said to bestow, with perfect sincerity, upon rank alone. He is reported to have said, that the purest and most useful friend a man could have was a Frenchwoman of a certain age, who had no designs upon his person: "they are so ready," he would add, "to do you service, and from their knowledge of the world, know so well how to serve you wisely.”*

In Paris, what men he found! what an interest in social problems! what a stir in the domain of the intellect! In his list of friends he could number nearly every person of literary or scientific distinction in Paris: the brothers Turgot, Raynal, Morellet, Rochefoucault, Buffon, D'Alembert, Condorcet, Cabanis, Le Roy, Mabley, Mirabeau, D'Holback, Marmontel, Necker, Malesherbes, Watelet, Madame de Genlis, Madame Denis, Madame Helvetius, Madame Brillon, and La Veillard, were all his friends or acquaint

ances.

We must observe, however, that he saw little of France except the best of her her most enlightened men, her most pleasing women, her most pleasant places. Confined at home by his duties, he did not, like his successor, Mr. Jefferson, wander forth into the provinces, and stroll into the peasant's hovels, and furtively peep into the boiling pot, and feel the hardness of the crust and the bed, his heart swelling with mingled rage and pity at the hideous spectacle of hopeless want in the midst of wasted plenty. Consequently, in all Franklin's writings, there is not a passage from which we can infer that he understood the condition of France, or the peril of the monarchy; which to less sagacious observers had for many years been apparent. He may, nevertheless, have comprehended the danger in all its imminence, and not recorded the fact; for it

*Seward's Anecdotes, iv.. 223.