along, a song, in honor of the trades, was struck off, and scattered among the people. The author of this homely ditty was no other than the President of Pennsylvania. It contained such stanzas as these: "Ye TAILORS! of ancient and noble renown, Who clothe all the people in country and town, "Ye SHOEMAKERS! noble from ages long past, "Ye HATTERS! who oft with hands not very fair, "And CARDERS, and SPINNERS, and WEAVERS attend, "Ye COOPERS! who rattle with drivers and adz, "Each tradesman turn out with his tools in his hand, The late Major Noah, who began his literary life as a writer of patriotic dramas, used to say, that his mind received its bent in that direction from his frequent gazing at the sign of a tavern in Philadelphia, called "The Federal Convention." "It was an excellent piece of painting of its kind." he once wrote. "representing a group of venerable personages, engaged in public discussion, with the following distich: "These thirty-eight great men have signed a powerful deed, That better times to us shall very soon succeed.' "The sign," he adds, "must have been painted very soon after the adoption of the Federal Constitution, and I remember to have stood, many a time and oft,' gazing when a boy, at the assembled patriots, particularly the venerable head and spectacles of Dr. Franklin, always in conspicuous relief."* CHAPTER III. SETTING HIS HOUSE IN ORDER. THE second year of Dr. Franklin's presidency of Pennsylvania expired in the autumn of 1787. He had hoped to be allowed to retire. It was his wish to revisit once more, before he died, his native city, to embrace his aged sister, and converse with the few surviving friends of other days. He desired, also, to spend the last years of his life at the farm of his grandson, away from the ceaseless interruptions of Philadelphia, and there work at his leisure upon the Autobiography, which his friends were so anxious he should complete. But, it appears, his grandson did not find an agricultural life so pleasant as he had hoped. He hankered after the society of Paris, and sought every opportunity to relieve the tedium of his existence by visiting Philadelphia. Probably he did not urge his grandfather to carry out his scheme of retirement to the country. At the expiration of the second term, Dr. Franklin was unanimously re-elected, and he consented to forego his antici pations of literary leisure. "I must own," he wrote to Mrs. Mecom, "that it is no small pleasure to me, and I suppose it will give my sister pleasure, that, after such a long trial of me, I should be elected a third time by my fellow-citizens, without a dissenting vote but my own, to fill the most honorable post in their power to Cyclopedia of American Literature," ii., 74. bestow. This universal and unbounded confidence of a whole people, flatters my vanity much more than a peerage could do. "Hung o'er with ribbons, and stuck round with strings."" as There is a fine thought in one of his letters of this year with regard to his advanced age. "I am grown so old," he wrote, to have buried most of the friends of my youth, and I now often hear persons whom I knew when children, called old Mr. such-aone, to distinguish them from their sons now men grown and in business; so that, by living twelve years beyond David's period, I seem to have intruded myself into the company of posterity, when I ought to have been abed and asleep." He was still fond of life. He told one of his friends that when he dwelt upon the rapid progress mankind was making in philosophy, politics, morals, and the arts of living, and when he considered that, as one improvement begets another, the future progress of the race was likely to be more rapid than it ever had been, he almost wished it had been his destiny to be born two or three centuries later. He sometimes amused his friends with humorous predictions of inventions yet to be, and expressed a wish to revisit the earth at the end of a century to see how man was getting on. Would that he could! How pleasant to show the Shade of Franklin about the modern world! What would he say of the Great Eastern, the Erie Canal, the locomotive, the telegraph, the Hoe printing-press, the steam type-setter, chloroform, the sewing machine, the Continental Hotel, the Fairmount Water-Works, the improved strawberry, an omnibus, gas-light, the Sanitary Commission, Chicago, Buckle's History, Mills's Political Economy, Herbert Spencer's "First Principles," Adam Bede, David Copperfield, the Newcomes, the Philadelphia High School, Henry Ward Beecher's church, the Heart of the Andes? Surely, he would admit that we have done pretty well in the seventy-five years that have passed since he left us. Perhaps he knows more of these things than we suppose. If his youthful theory of the minor gods is true, he may be serving now as the secondary Providence of that portion of North America which lies between Mason and Dixon's Line and British America-where, certainly, the Spirit of Franklin is universally manifest. Over the territory south of that Line, the busy, verbose, malign, and distrustful Soul of VOL. II.-25* Arthur Lee appears to have borne sway. 1861! Hence the rebellion of If Franklin was fond of life, this life, he had only pleasing expectations of the life to come, and he founded his hope of future happiness on the justice of God. He felt that at the hands of a just and good Father he deserved little but happiness. "You tell me," he wrote in 1788, "that our poor friend Ben Kent is gone; I hope to the regions of the blessed; or at least to some place where souls are prepared for those regions. I found my hope on this, that, though not so orthodox as you and I, he was an honest man, and had his virtues. If he had any hypocrisy, it was of that inverted kind, with which a man is not so bad as he seems to be. And, with regard to future bliss, I cannot help imagining, that multitudes of the zealously orthodox of different sects, who at the last day may flock together in hopes of seeing each other damned, will be disappointed, and obliged to rest content with their own salvation." He had, indeed, a peculiar tenderness for honest men who had been so unfortunate as to incur obloquy for opinion's sake, and particularly for those who had been unable to conform to established creeds and prevalent religious usages, a class of men to whom mankind are deeply indebted. In writing to one of his English friends, about this time, he desired to be remembered affectionately to "good Dr. Price, and to the honest heretic, Dr. Priestley." He added: "I do not call him honest by way of distinction; for I think all the heretics I have known have been virtuous men. They have the virtue of fortitude, or they would not venture to own their heresy; and they cannot afford to be deficient in any of the other virtues, as that would give advantage to their many enemies; and they have not, like orthodox sinners, such a number of friends to excuse or justify them. Do not, however, mistake me. It is not to my good friend's heresy that I impute his honesty. On the contrary, it is his honesty that has brought upon him the character of heretic." In December, 1787, his aged frame was severely shaken by a fall down the stone steps that led to his garden. He was much bruised, his right wrist was sprained, and the shock brought on a bad fit of the stone. He rallied, however, in the following spring, and pursued his usual avocations. The topic of the new year was the election of a President of the United States. "General Washing ton," he wrote, "is the man that all our eyes are fixed on for President, and what little influence I may have, is devoted to him." The accident in his garden, perhaps, led him to think that it was time to put his house in order against his final departure. He inquired out all his relations, endeavored to collect his debts, many of which were of fifty years' standing, tried to get his accounts with the United States settled, catalogued his books, and put his affairs, important and unimportant, in perfect order, so far as he could. control them. He made his will with the most thoughtful consideration for all who had claims upon his remembrance. His will, indeed, is one of the most carefully drawn productions of the kind which have been published. His estate, in 1788, was worth, at a liberal estimate, one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, of which about two-thirds was productive. Besides his residence in Market Street, with its valuable accumulations of books, apparatus, furniture, and plate, he possessed in the same street two new and large houses, two others of less value, and the printing-house recently built for his grandson. He had also a small house in Sixth Street, two houses in Pewter Platter Alley, a lot in Arch Street, some lots near the center of the city, and a pasture ground in Hickory Lane. He owned a tract of land in Nova Scotia, three thousand acres in Georgia, some lands on the Ohio, and a house and lot in Unity Street, Boston. Bonds he held of the value of seven or eight thousand pounds. He had twelve shares in the Bank of North America, about five thousand pounds in money, and the portrait of the King of France adorned with four hundred and eight diamonds. A balance of unknown amount was due to him from the United States, besides numberless small debts dating back to the time when he was a printer and stationer. The will opens with this sentence :-"I, Benjamin Franklin, of Philadelphia, printer, late Minister Plenipotentiary from the United States of America to the Court of France, now President of the State of Pennsylvania, do make and declare my last will and testament as follows" To his son, William Franklin, he left his lands in Nova Scotia, and forgave the debts due to him from his son. "The part he acted against me," the will continued, "in the late war, which is of public notoriety, will account for my leaving him no more of an estate he endeavored to deprive me of." The bulk of his Philadel |