back on the banks of the Delaware, there preparing his last will and testament.

"He loves his ease," the New Englander writes to Samuel Adams, "hates to offend, and seldom gives any opinion till obliged to do it. There are so many private families, ladies and gentlemen, that he visits so often, and they are so fond of him, that he cannot well avoid it, and so much intercourse with Academicians, that all these things together keep his mind in a constant state of dissipation."

All of which might be true, yet there is about this pen-sketch more of acerbity than charity.

Amid all this "constant state of dissipation, America-stronger America now, full of life and fight, and hope-was still Franklin's leading thought. Not only of the America of his own time did he muse; his fancy sometimes carried him away to the country as it would be after he had paid the rapidly maturing debt of nature.

"I must soon quit this scene," he writes to General Washington, "but you may live to see our country flourish, as it will amazingly and rapidly after the war is over; like a field of young Indian corn which long fair weather and sunshine has enfeebled and discoloured, and which in that weak state, by a thunder gust of violent wind, hail, and rain, seemed to be threatened with absolute destruction; yet the storm being past, it recovers fresh verdure, shoots up with double vigour, and delights the eye, not of its owner only, but of every observing traveller."

Franklin prophesied, as he builded, better than he knew.

O read over the correspondence which punctuated Franklin's life in France is to regret that a volume rather than several short paragraphs cannot be devoted to the lighter phase of the philosopher's exile, wherein we see him acting the gallant to clever women, and settling down, ere he should leave the earthly scene forever, to warm his cheery old heart and gouty limbs in the sunshine of enjoyment. Here again appears the versatility of the man. One day he is writing upon subjects the most abstruse or the most grave, and at another time he is gaily describing a fantastic dream for the edification of the blue-stocking widow of the great Helvetius. Mortified at the barbarous resolution pronounced by you so positively yesterday evening, that you would remain single the rest of your life, as a compliment due to the memory of your husband, I retired to my chamber. Throwing myself upon my bed, I dreamt that I was dead, and was

transported to the Elysian Fields." Then follows the dream, which is described with a grace and airy humour more suggestive, let us say, of a Beaumarchais than of the usually matter-of-fact Franklin.

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Another day he resuscitates, for the benefit of his friend Monsieur l'Abbé de la Roche, a "little drinking song which I wrote forty years ago," wherein are to be found allusions to Venus, Lucifer, and the joys of friends and a bottle." It is quite in the style of (although more grammatically expressed than) the inevitable ditty rattled off, to the accompaniment of clinking tin cups, by a sad-eyed chorus in comic operetta. Then he has another attack of gallantry, and tells his dear Madame Helvetius that statesmen, philosophers, historians, poets, and men of learning of all sorts are drawn around her " as straws about a fine piece of amber." Yet he is the correspondent who can write, almost in the same breath: "When a religion is good, I conceive that it will support itself; and when it cannot support itself, and God does not take care to support it, so that its professors are obliged to call for the help of the civil power, it is a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one." The parsifleur and the thinker upon religion, all in one! What pleasure he gets from the pen; how the using it so frequently keeps him fresh and young, besides leaving many an agreeable literary tid-bit for posterity!

When he has the gout he finds distraction from the pain by composing a little dialogue between himself and his tormentor, which incidentally gives

*From a letter to Richard Price,

us a glimpse of his mode of life at seductive Passy.

"You would not only torment my body to death," says the doctor to Madam Gout, "but ruin my good name; you reproach me as a glutton and a tippler; now all the world, that knows me, will allow that I am neither the one nor the other."

GOUT. The world may think as it pleases; it is always very complaisant to itself, and sometimes to its friends; but I very well know that the quantity of meat and drink proper for a man who takes a reasonable degree of exercise, would be too much for another, who never takes any.

FRANKLIN.

I take - eh-oh! as much exercise - eh! (here a twinge of pain seizes him) as I can, Madam Gout. You know my sedentary state, and on that account it would seem, Madam Gout, as if you might spare me a little, seeing it is not altogether my own fault.

GOUT. Not a jot; your rhetoric and your politeness are thrown away; your apology avails nothing. If your situation in life is a sedentary one, your amusements, your recreations, at least, should be active. You ought to walk or ride; or, if the weather prevents that, play at billiards. But let us examine your course of life. While the mornings are long, and you have leisure to go abroad, what do you do? Why, instead of gaining an appetite for breakfast, by salutary exercise, you amuse yourself with books, pamphlets, or newspapers, which commonly are not worth the reading. Yet you eat an inordinate breakfast, four dishes of tea, with cream, and one or two buttered toasts, with slices of hung beef, which I fancy are not things the most easily digested. Immediately afterward you sit down to write at your desk, or converse with persons who apply to you on business. Thus the time passes till one, without any kind of bodily exercise. But all this I could pardon, in regard, as you say, to your sedentary condition. But what is your practice after dinner? Walking in the beautiful gardens of those friends, with whom you have dined, would be the choice of men of sense; yours is to be fixed down to chess,* where you are found engaged for two or three hours.

*"Dr. Franklin was so immoderately fond of chess, that one evening at Passy, he sat at that amusement from six in the afternoon till sunrise."-WILLIAM TEMPLE FRANKLIN,

The doctor had diagnosed his own case in this bit of pleasantry born of pain, but he never did very much in the way of reforming the sedentary ways. The routine of his French life was too attractive; his venerable legs had grown too lazy; it was far easier to play chess, or to entertain at his own table, or drive to the no longer youthful Veuve Helvetius or to the amiable Madame Brillon-" a lady of most respectable character and pleasing conversation.” At the Brillons the septuagenarian found a second home, where he was accustomed to spend at least two evenings every week. Madame Brillon, he writes, “has among other elegant accomplishments, that of an excellent musician; and, with her daughter, who sings prettily, and some friends who play, she kindly entertains me and my grandson with little concerts, a cup of tea, and a game of chess. I call this my Opera, for I rarely go to the Opera at Paris.” This is quite an idyllic portrait of the lady in whose honour he composed several of his famous Bagatelles, including The Ephemera and the Story of the Whistle. The latter was elevated years ago to the dignity of a classic. Who does not recall the familiar cases of the unfortunates who paid too much for their whistles ?

The philosopher not only wrote much while at Passy, but he unwittingly inspired several of his neighbours to try their own literary powers by composing verses in his praise. On one memorable occasion he was made the victim-perhaps not a very bored one-of a fête champetre and a poem, thrust upon him by the admiring Countess d'Houdetot, at her château in the valley of Montmorency. The