lin with which our literature has been enriched. What any illustrious man may have said of himself should only inflame our curiosity to know what others have said of him. In giving for the first time in a consecutive story Franklin's own account of his singularly useful life, I indulge the hope of increasing rather than diminishing the curiosity of my readers to know how he impresses those who make his writings and career a subject of special investigation. THE SQUIRRELS, February 22, 1874. 2 CONTENTS OF VOLUME I. PREFACE PAGE 5-13 19-76 Historical Sketch of the Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Autograph Autobiography of Franklin from his Birth to his Arrival in England as Agent of the Colony of Pennsylvania (1706-1757) . 81-372 PART II. CONTINUATION OF THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY FROM FRANKLIN'S ARRIVAL IN ENGLAND AS AGENT OF THE COLONY OF PENNSYLVANIA, IN JUNE, 1757, UNTIL the Close oF HIS MISSION THERE AND RETURN TO PHILADELPHIA, IN 1775. CHAPTER I., Domestication and Protracted Illness in London-Removal of Governor Denny-Countermining the Proprietors-Historical Review, etc., of Pennsylvania-Tour through England and Scotland--Cambridge University-Visits the Home of his Ancestors-Counsels the Annexation of Canada to the British Empire-Portrait of William friends in the Old World, among whom he had spent the most useful and perhaps the happiest years of his life. To this protracted expatriation we owe the fact that there is scarcely an important incident of Franklin's life which is not described by himself in his memoirs, or in his correspondence; and it is to this vast treasury of sterling English, which seems to have been almost miraculously preserved from incalculable perils by sea and by land, that the legion of his biographers have been indebted for whatever has most contributed to render their works attractive. I am not aware that any other eminent man has left so complete a record of his own life. The part of it which, from the nature of things, could not be preserved in correspondence-his youth and early manhood; his years of discipline and preparation-has been made as familiar as household words to at least three generations, in those imperishable pages which, in the full maturity of his faculties and experience, he prepared at the special instance of his friends Le Veillard, Rochefoucault, and Vaughan. From the period when that fragment closes until his death, we have a continuous, I might almost say daily record of his life, his labors, his anxieties, and his triumphs, from his own pen, and written when all the incidents and emotions they awakened were most fresh and distinct in his mind. If I may judge by the unexampled popularity and influence of his memoirs of the early part of his life, I am not mistaken in supposing that the world will be more interested in reading his own account of those more eventful years which followed, than in what any other person has said or can say about them. However we may prize the judgments of discriminating biographers of Franklin, their interest must always be subordinate to that which we feel in his own; and the pleasure, be it never so great, which we experience in reading other versions of the incidents. of his varied and picturesque career only increases our curiosity to read the account which he gave of them at the time, to his government and friends, in his own pure, limpid, and sparkling English. It is under the impulse of such convictions that the work which is now submitted to the public has been prepared. I have aimed to condense Franklin's own. memorials of his entire life, hitherto scattered through many bulky volumes and yet more bulky manuscript collections, into a single compact work, and to give them the convenient order and attractiveness of a continuous narrative. To this end I have taken from his writings and correspondence whatever was autobiographical, and presented it in a strictly chronological order. I have not attempted to give all his letters, nor more of any letter or other document than furthered the central and controlling purpose of the work,—to |