man.

reputation, much less to accumulate a great fortune. He wrote no elaborate histories, or learned treatises, or stately tomes. Short essays or tracts, thrown off at a heat to answer an immediate end,-letters to his associates in science or politics,-letters to his family and friends, these make up the great bulk of his literary productions; and, under the admirable editorship of Mr. Sparks, nine noble volumes do they fill,—abounding in evidences of a wisdom, sagacity, ingenuity, diligence, freshness of thought, fullness of information, comprehensiveness of reach, and devotedness of purpose, such as are rarely to be found associated in any single Wherever he found any thing to be done, he did it; any thing to be investigated, he investigated it; any thing to be invented or discovered, he forthwith tried to invent or discover it, and almost always succeeded. He did every thing as if his whole attention in life had been given to that one thing. And thus, while he did enough in literature to be classed among the great writers of his day; enough in invention and science to secure him the reputation of a great philosopher; enough in domestic politics to win the title of a great statesman; enough in foreign negotiations to merit the designation of a great diplomatist; he found time to do enough, also, in works of general utility, humanity, and benevolence, to insure him a perpetual memory as a great philanthropist.

"No form of personal suffering or social evil escaped his attention, or appealed in vain for such relief or remedy as his prudence could suggest or his purse supply. From that day of his early youth, when, a wanderer from his home and friends in a strange place, he was seen sharing his rolls with a poor woman and child, to the last act of his public life, when he signed that well-known memorial to Congress, as President of the AntiSlavery Society of Pennsylvania, a spirit of earnest and practical benevolence runs like a golden thread along his whole career. Would to Heaven that he could have looked earlier at that great evil at which he looked at last, and that the practical resources and marvelous sagacity of his mighty intellect could have been brought seasonably to bear upon the solution of a problem, now almost too intricate for any human faculties! Would to Heaven that he could have tasked his invention for a mode of drawing the fires safely from that portentous cloud,-in his day, indeed, hardly bigger than a man's hand,—but which is now blackening the whole sky, and threatening to rend asunder that noble fabric of union, of which he himself proposed the earliest model!"*

VIII.

BY HORACE GREELEY.-1862.

"Or the men whom the world currently terms Self-Made-that is, who severally fought their life-battles without the aid of inherited wealth, or "Address at the Inauguration of the Franklin Statue at Boston."

family honors, or educational advantages, perhaps our American FRANKLIN stands highest in the civilized world's regard. The salient feature of his career is its uniformity. In an age of wars, he never led an army, nor set a squadron in the field. He never performed any dazzling achievement. Though an admired writer and one of the greatest of scientific discoverers. he was not a genius. His progress from the mean tallow-chandler's shop of his Boston father, crammed full of hungry brothers and sisters, to the gilded saloons of Versailles, where he stood the observed of all observers," —in fact, more a king than the gentle Louis, was marked by no abrupt transition, no break, no bound-he seems not so much to have risen as to have grown. You cannot say when he ceased to be poor, or unknown, or powerless; he steps into each new and higher position as if he had been born for just that; you know that his newspaper, his almanac, his electrical researches, his parliamentary service, his diplomacy, were the best of their time; but who can say that he was more admirable in one field of useful effort than another? An embassador, it has been smartly said, is one sent abroad to lie for his country; yet you feel that this man could eminently serve his country in perfect truth-that his frank sincerity and heartfelt appreciation of the best points in the French character, in Parisian life, served her better than the most artful dissimulation, the most plausibie hypocrisy. The French Alliance was worth more to us than Saratoga—for it gave us Yorktown-and it was not Gates's victory, as is commonly asserted, but Franklin's power and popularity, alike in the salons and at Court, that gained us the French alliance.

"We cannot help asking, Were poverty and obstacle among the causes, or only the incidents, of this man's greatness? Had he been cradled in affluence and dandled in the lap of luxury, had he been crammed by tutors and learnedly boxed by professors—had Harvard or Yale conferred degrees upon him at twenty, as they both rather superfluously did when he was nearly fifty-had his youth been devoted to Latin conjugations and Greek hexameters rather than to candle-dipping and type-setting-would he have been the usefully great man he indisputably was? Admit that these queries can never be conclusively answered, they may yet be profitably pondered.

"I think I adequately appreciate the greatness of Washington; yet I must place Franklin above him as the consummate type and flowering of human nature under the skies of colonial America. Not that Washington was born to competence and all needful facilities for instruction, so that he began responsible life on vantage-ground that Franklin toiled twenty arduous, precious years to reach-I cannot feel that this fact has undue weight with me. I realize that there are elements of dignity, of grandeur, in the character of Washington for which that of Franklin affords no parallel. But when I contemplate the immense variety and versatility of Franklin's services to

his country and to mankind-when I think of him as a writer whose first effusions commanded attention in his early boyhood-as the monitor and teacher of his fellow-journeymen in a London printing-office-as almost from the outset a prosperous and influential editor when journalism had never before been a source of power-as taking his place naturally at the head of the postal service in America and of the earliest attempts to form a practical confederation of the Colonies-when I see him, never an enthusiast, and now nearly threescore-and-ten, renouncing office, hazarding fame, fortune, every thing, to struggle for the independence of his country-he having most to lose by failure of any American-his only son a bitter Loyalist-he cheerfully and repeatedly braving the dangers of an ocean swarming with enemies, to render his country the service as embassador which no other man could perform-and finally, when more than eighty years old, crowning a life of duty and honor by helping to frame that immortal Constitution which made us one nation forever-I cannot place Franklin second to any other American. He could not have done the work of Washington-no other man could--but then he did so many admirable things which Washington had too sound a judgment even to attempt. And, great as Washington was, he was not great enough to write and print, after he had achieved power and world-wide fame, a frank, ingenuous confession of his youthful follies and sins for the instruction and admonition of others. Many a man can look calmly down the throats of roaring cannon who lacks the courage and true philanthropy essential to those called to render this service to mankind."*

*From an unpublished Lecture on Self-Made Men.

INDEX.

Adams, Mrs. John, vol. i., quoted upon edu-
cation of women in New England, 57; upon
sea-voyage, 144; upon intelligence of Ameri-
can people, 203; upon society in Philadel-American Weekly Mercury, vol. i., remarks
phia, 208; quotes Poor Richard, 227; attends
Dr. Price's chapel, 545.