MCCCLXXV

ADDRESS OF THE PROVOST, VICE-PROVOST, AND PROFESSORS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA TO DR. FRANKLIN

HONORED SIR:-The Provost, Vice-Provost, and Professors of the University of Pennsylvania beg leave to congratulate you on your safe arrival in your native country, after having accomplished the duties of your exalted character with dignity and

success.

While we participate in the general happiness of America, to the establishment of which your political abilities and patriotic exertions have so signally contributed, we feel a particular pleasure in paying our acknowledgments to the gentleman who first projected the liberal plan of the institution over which we have the honor to preside.

Not contented with enriching the world with the most important discoveries in natural philosophy, your benevolence and liberality of sentiment early engaged you to make provision for exciting a spirit of inquiry into the secret operations of nature, for exalting and refining the genius of America by the propagation of useful learning; and for qualifying many of her sons to make that illustrious figure which has commanded the esteem and admiration of the most polished nations of Europe.

Among the many benevolent projections, which have laid so ample a foundation for the esteem and gratitude of your native country, permit this seminary to reckon her first establishment, upon the solid

principles of equal liberty, as one of the most considerable and important. And now, when restored, through the influence of our happy Constitution, to her original broad and catholic bottom; when enriched by the protection of generous donations of a public-spirited and patriotic Assembly; and when flourishing under the countenance of the best friends of religion, learning, and liberty in the State; she cannot but promise herself the continued patronage of the evening of that life which divine Providence has so eminently distinguished.

May the same indulgent Providence yet continue your protracted life, enriched and crowned with the best of blessings, to nurse and cherish this favorite child of your youth; that the future sons of science in this western world may have additional reason to remember the name of FRANKLIN with gratitude and pleasure.

Signed, in the name and by order of the Faculty, by

JOHN EWING, Provost.

PHILADELPHIA, September 16, 1785.

DR. FRANKLIN'S ANSWER

I am greatly obliged, gentlemen, by your kind congratulations on my safe arrival.

It gives me extreme pleasure to find that seminaries of learning are increasing in America, and particularly that the University over which you preside continues to flourish. My best wishes will always attend it.

The instruction of youth is one of those employments which to the public are most useful; it ought, therefore, to be esteemed among the most honorable. Its successful exercise does not, however, always meet with the reward it merits, except in the satisfaction of having contributed to the forming of virtuous and able men for the service of their country.

MCCCLXXVI

TO JOHN JAY

PHILADELPHIA, 19 September, 1785. SIR: I have the honor to acquaint you that I left Paris the 12th of July, and, agreeably to the permission of Congress, am returned to my own country. Mr. Jefferson had recovered his health, and was much esteemed and respected there. Our joint letters have already informed you of our late proceedings, to which I have nothing to add except that the last act I did as Minister Plenipotentiary for making treaties, was to sign with him, two days before I came away, the treaty of friendship and commerce that had been agreed on with Prussia,' and which was to be carried to the Hague by Mr. Short, there to be signed by Baron Thulemeier on the part of the king, who, without the least hesitation, had approved and conceded to the new humane articles proposed by Congress. Mr. Short was also to call at London for the signature of Mr. Adams, who, I learned, when at Southampton, was well received at the British court.

1 See this treaty at large in the public Journals of Congress, vol. iv., p. 639.

The Captain Lamb who in a letter of yours to Mr. Adams was said to be coming to us with instructions respecting Morocco had not appeared, nor had we heard any thing of him; so nothing had been done by us in that treaty.

I left the court of France in the same friendly disposition towards the United States that we have all along experienced, though concerned to find that our credit is not better supported in the payment of the interest money due on our loans, which, in case of another war, must be, they think, extremely prejudicial to us, and indeed may contribute to draw on a war the sooner, by affording our enemies the encouraging confidence that those who take so little care to pay will not again find it easy to borrow. I received from the king, at my departure, the present of his picture set round with diamonds, usually given to ministers plenipotentiary who have signed any treaties with that court; and it is at the disposition of Congress, to whom be pleased to present my dutiful respects. I am, with great esteem and regard, etc., B. FRANKLIN.

P. S.-Not caring to trust them to a common conveyance I send by my late secretary, who will have the honor of delivering them to you, all the original treaties I have been concerned in negotiating, that were completed. Those with Portugal and Denmark continue in suspense.'

I Dr. Franklin left Passy on the 12th of July, and proceeded by way of Havre to Southampton in England. He sailed from Cowes on the 28th of July, and arrived in Philadelphia on the 14th of September. M. Houdon was a passenger in the same ship.

MCCCLXXVII

TO GEORGE WASHINGTON

PHILADELPHIA, 20 September, 1785. DEAR SIR:-I am just arrived from a country where the reputation of General Washington runs very high, and where everybody wishes to see him in person; but, being told that it is not likely he ever will favor them with a visit, they hope at least for a sight of his perfect resemblance by means of their principal statuary, M. Houdon,' whom Mr. Jefferson and myself agreed with to come over for the purpose of taking a bust, in order to make the intended statue for the State of Virginia. He is here, but the materials and instruments he sent down the Seine from Paris not being arrived at Havre when we sailed, he was obliged to leave them, and is now busied in supplying himself here. As soon as that is done he proposes to wait on you in Virginia, as he understands there is no prospect of your coming

The same year that this the most eminent of French sculptors sent his statue of Voltaire, now in the vestibule of the Théâtre Français, to be exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1781, he also sent a statue of Diana, which he had executed for Catherine II of Russia.

The latter work was refused, the jury alleging that a statue of Diana required drapery, without which, they said, the goddess became a "suivante de Venus."

The great merit of the work in other respects could not save it from insult. A bronze reproduction of it may be seen in the Louvre. Houdon's annoyance at this treatment is supposed to have had its influence in determining him to accept the invitation given him by Franklin and Jefferson to go to America and execute a statue of Washington.

He accompanied Franklin, whose bust he had recently executed, to the United States in 1785, stayed some time with Washington at Mt. Vernon, and there modelled the bust of our first President. He soon returned to Paris, where he died in 1828.