who were kept out by guards; but, the officer being told that we were strangers from England, he immediately admitted us, accompanied and showed us every thing. Why don't we practice this urbanity to Frenchmen? Why should they be allowed to outdo us in any thing?

"Here is an exhibition of painting, like ours in London, to which multitudes flock daily. I am not connoisseur enough to judge which has most merit. Every night, Sundays not excepted, here are plays or operas; and, though the weather has been hot, and the houses full, one is not incommoded by the heat so much as with us in winter. They must have some way of changing the air that we are not acquainted with. I shall inquire into it.

"Traveling is one way of lengthening life, at least in appearance. It is but about a fortnight since we left London, but the variety of scenes we have gone through makes it seem equal to six months living in one place. Perhaps I have suffered a greater change, too, in my own person, than I could have done in six years at home. I had not been here six days, before my tailor and perruquier had transformed me into a Frenchman. Only think what a figure I make in a little bag-wig and with naked ears! They told me I was become twenty years younger, and looked very gallant.*

"This letter shall cost you a shilling, and you may consider it cheap when you reflect that it has cost me at least fifty guineas to get into the situation that enables me to write it. Besides, I might, if I had stayed at home, have won perhaps two shillings of you at cribbage. By the way, now I mention cards, let me tell you that quadrille is now out of fashion here, and English whist all the mode at Paris and the court. And pray look upon it as no small matter, that, surrounded as I am by the glories of the world, and amusements of all sorts, I remember you, and Dolly, and all the dear good folks at Bromley. It is true I cannot help it, but must and ever shall remember you all with pleasure."

He visited Paris a second time in 1769, and spent several weeks there. In 1772 he made his long ago meditated tour in Ireland, where he dined with the Lord-lieutenant, supped with the leading patriots, was caressed and entertained by Lord Hillsborough, and admitted to the floor of the Irish Parliament by a unanimous vote.

* In London he wore a long curling wig.

He was puzzled at Lord Hillsborough's hospitable conduct; not sufficiently reflecting upon the infinite difference between an Irish nobleman doing the honors of his country to a distinguished stranger, and an Irish Secretary of State striving for a place in the British peerage. "Lord Hillsborough," he observes, "seemed attentive to every thing that might make my stay in his house agreeable to me, and put his eldest son, Lord Killwarling, into his phaeton with me, to drive me a round of forty miles, that I might see the country, the seats, and manufactures, covering me with his own greatcoat lest I should take cold."

The awful poverty of the Irish peasantry struck him with astonishment and dismay. "I thought often," he wrote, "of the happiness of New England, where every man is a freeholder, has a vote in public affairs, lives in a tidy, warm house, has plenty of good food and fuel, with whole clothes from head to foot, the manufacture, perhaps, of his own family. Long may they continue in this situation!"

Continuing his journey into Scotland, where he remarked that most of the peasantry still went barefoot, he spent several weeks among his old friends in that country, returning to London after an absence of three months. Calling upon Lord Hillsborough, soon after his return, he was refused admittance.

His summer tour of 1773 was signalized by an event deserving more notice than it has received. While staying at the country house of his friend Lord Despencer, he joined that nobleman in a worthy attempt to abbreviate the services of the Church of England. They reduced the catechism to two questions: "What is your duty to God?" and "What is your duty to your neighbor ?" Of the psalms, all the repetitions and all the imprecations were omitted. The first lesson, being taken from the Old Testament, was left out. The Nicene creed and that of St. Athanasius were abolished, and the Apostles' creed shortened. The communion service, that of baptism, confirmation, burial, and visitation of the sick, were all abbreviated. The morning service was cut down about one-half. An edition of the prayer-book thus abridged was published anonymously in 1773 by a London bookseller, but attracted so little attention that scarcely any copies were sold. The preface of the work, which was composed entirely by Dr. Franklin, is extremely modest and judicious. The editor professed himself to be "a prot

estant of the Church of England," and one who held "in the highest veneration the doctrines of Jesus Christ." "He is a sincere lover of social worship, deeply sensible of its usefulness to society; and he aims at doing some service to religion, by proposing such abbreviations and omissions in the forms of our Liturgy (retaining every thing he thinks essential) as might, if adopted, procure a more general attendance." ** Many pious and devout persons, whose age or infirmities will not suffer them to remain for hours in a cold church, especially in the winter season, are obliged to forego the comfort and edification they would receive by their attendance on divine service. These, by shortening the time, would be relieved; and the younger sort, who have had some principles of religion instilled into them, and who have been educated in a belief of the necessity of adoring their Maker, would probably more frequently, as well as cheerfully, attend divine service, if they were not detained so long at any one time. Also, many well-disposed tradesmen, shopkeepers, artificers, and others, whose habitations are not remote from churches, could, and would, more frequently at least, find time to attend divine service on other than Sundays, if the prayers were reduced into a much narrower compass."

He argues his cause at great length, explaining his reasons for each omission with clearness and decorum. The effort was premature. It was made at one of those bad periods when the old men being bigots and reactionists, the young men were, of course, radicals and roués; when the educated being indifferent to elevated considerations, the ignorant were an unprotected prey of fanatics and pretenders. There was no class who could be interested in such an attempt. The time may come, however, when this neglected and forgotten volume may be sought out, and some of its suggestions adopted in the country for which they were designed; the Church of England being now the only church in Christendom strong enough to admit those great changes which are necessary to end the long strife between Intelligence and Orthodoxy. Franklin's great object was to extinguish theology, which he thought divided and distracted mankind to no purpose; and to restore RELIGION, which, he believed, tended to exalt, refine, unite, assure, and calm the anxious sons of men.

In view of the events about to be related, a few words may be added here with regard to the reputation of Dr. Franklin at this

* * *

time. It was very great and very extensive. A member of every important learned body in Europe, he was also a manager of the Royal Society, president of the American Philosophical Society, and one of the eight foreign members of the Royal Academy of Sciences of France. Three editions of his philosophical works had appeared in Paris, and a new edition, much enlarged, was published in London in 1773. "As to my situation here," he wrote to his son, just after the appointment of Lord Dartmouth, "nothing can be more agreeable. Learned and ingenious foreigners that come to England almost all make a point of visiting me; for my reputation is still higher abroad than here. Several of the foreign embassadors have assiduously cultivated my acquaintance, treating me as one of their corps, partly, I believe, from the desire they have, from time to time, of hearing something of American affairs, an object become of importance in foreign courts, who begin to hope Britain's alarming power will be diminished by the defection of her colonies; and partly that they may have an opportunity of introducing me to the gentlemen of their country who desire it. The king, too, has lately been heard to speak of me with great regard."

Yet we should always bear in mind, in estimating the importance of persons in feudal England, that society in that great country exists in chronic dislocation. The natural aristocracy of England is kept out of its place by an artificial aristocracy. The natural aristocracy of a civilized country are the leading men in the leading pursuits; great merchants, great mechanics, great engineers, great statesmen, great soldiers, great preachers, teachers, doctors, and lawyers, great capitalists and improvers, great farmers and navigators, great inventors and discoverers, great authors, editors, actors, and artists. These are the men who naturally take the first place, and to whom we all most willingly and proudly concede it. But in England such men were nothing in the social scale compared with persons of feudal "rank." If Franklin had been styled Lord Boston, or Duke of Pennsylvania, or even Viscount Germantown, every one in the England of that day would have regarded him as one of the Great. That he really was, to some extent, lord* of Boston; that he was, to a very considerable extent, duke of Pennsylva

* "Law-ward."-T. Carlyle.

nia, were facts of no importance whatever, in enhancing his personal consequence at the Court-end of London. By the more barbarous portion of the people of that quarter of the town, the fact so honorable to Franklin, that his father had been a candle-maker, and himself a journeyman printer, were actually supposed to diminish his claims to respect!

CHAPTER VIII.

THE HUTCHINSON LETTERS.

ONE day, in the latter part of 1772, Dr. Franklin was conversing with a member of Parliament upon the violent proceedings of the ministry against Boston, particularly the attempt to compel obedience to hateful measures by quartering troops in the town. He spoke with warmth, for Boston was his native place, and Massachusetts had conferred upon him an honorable trust. Those arrogant and vindictive proceedings, he said, were the more to be deplored, because in America they would be regarded as the acts of the nation, whereas they were merely ministerial and partisan expedients. They gave rise also to tumults and rash publications in America, which equally deceived the people of England; giving them the impression that the colonists were factious and disloyal.

The member of Parliament replied, that on one most material point Dr. Franklin was mistaken. The offensive measures, he said, did not originate with the ministry, nor in England at all. He declared that not only the sending out of the troops, but all the other colonial grievances, had been suggested and solicited by some of the most respectable among the Americans themselves, who had repeatedly written to the ministry that the employment of force was necessary for the welfare of their country. Franklin expressed doubts of the probability of this statement. The gentleman then said that he would undertake to furnish such proof of his assertions as would convince Dr. Franklin and Dr. Franklin's countrymen of their truth.

Some days after this interview the member called again, and