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

Excerpt from Works of Dr. Benjamin Franklin: Consisting of Essays, Humourous, Moral, and Literary; With His Life

Every civilized nation on the globe, has, at one period of other, produced distinguished individuals, whose actions have excited the admiration of their contemporaries, and rendered them worthy of being handed down as examples to posterity. The Memoirs of Dr. Franklin are interesting in a high degree, and worthy the perusal of every friend to science or humanity.

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, that '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 existed 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 Shakspeare and Milton, should this reproach be still true, we will inquire from what unfriendly causes it has proceeded, that the other countries of Europe and quarters of the earth shall not have inscribed any name in the roll of poets. In war we have reduced a Washington, whose memory will be adored while liberty shall have votaries; whose name will triumph over time, and will 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 degeneracies of nature. In physics we have a Franklin, than whom no one of the present age has made more important discoveries, nor has enriched philosophy with more, or more ingenious solutions of the phenomena of nature. We have supposed Mr. Rittenhouse second to no astronomer living; that in genius he must be the first, because he is self-taught,' &c.

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