and to make a man forget his restless resentments. They have a strange power in them to hush disorders of the soul, and reduce us to a serene and placid state of mind.

"The main design of this weekly paper will be to entertain the town with the most comical and diverting incidents of human life which, in so large a place as Boston, will not fail of a universal exemplification: Nor shall we be wanting to fill up these papers with a grateful interspersion of more serious morals, which may be drawn from the most ludicrous and odd parts of life."

The reader familiar with the writings of our laughing philosopher, will say of this passage: 'tis Franklin's voice, if Franklin ever spoke. The sentences beginning "Pieces of Pleasantry," are Franklin's essence. There was nothing he more believed in than laughter; his power of provoking which served him for eloquence, as it did his diplomacy, and rendered him the most delightful of companions and colleagues.

It does not appear that Couranto mended his manners under the new regime. The paper continued to be humorous and satirical, and refrained not from bantering the clergy and the brethren. "Old Janus" was now the presiding genius of the Courant. We find communications addressed to this mysterious personage, as "venerable old Janus," "good Master Janus," "the ancient and venerable Doctor Janus," "Master Janus," "Doctor Janus," "Father Janus," "honest Doctor Janus," and "the most excellent Janus." The number issued immediately after the action of the Council may have been a little more guarded in manner than before, but the spirit and object of the paper were unchanged. One of the first numbers issued in the name of the ex-apprentice contained a communication giving satirical advice to the editor, how he should conduct his paper so as to avoid offense. But this very piece was, doubtless, as offensive to the clergy as it was amusing to their opponents.

"Take great care," observed the writer, "that you do not cast injurious Reflections on the Reverend and Faithful Ministers of the Gospel, or any of them. We think New-England may boast of almost an unparalleled Happiness in its MINISTERS; take them in general, there is scarce a more Candid, Learned, Pious and Laborious Set of Men under Heaven. But tho' they are the Best of Men, yet they are but Men at the best, and by consequence subject

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to like Frailties and Passions as other Men; And when we hear of the Imprudencies of any of them, we should cover them with the mantle of Love and Charity, and not profanely expose and Aggravate them. Charity covers a multitude of Sins. Besides, when you abuse the Clergy you do not consult your own Interest, for you may be sure they will improve their influence to the uttermost to suppress your paper."

No doubt, the sinners of Boston chuckled over this covert, but very transparent, satire.

The following piece we may almost certainly conclude to be the work of Benjamin. It must have been as shocking to the clergy of that time as any of the articles published before the prosecution of the paper:

"At the last Meeting of our Club, one of the Company read to us some Passages from a zealous Author against Hat-Honour, Titular Respects, &c., which we will communicate to the Reader for the Diversion of this Week, if he is dispos'd to be merry with the Folly of his Fellow-Creature.

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Honour, Friend, says he, properly ascends, & not descends; 'yet the Hat, when the Head is uncover'd, descends, and therefore 'there can be no Honour in it. Besides, Honour was from the Be'ginning, but Hats are an invention of a late Time, and conse'quently true Honour standeth not therein.

"In old Time it was no disrespect for Men and Women to be 'call'd by their own Names: Adam, was never called Master 'Adam; we never read of Noah Esquire, Lot Knight and Baronet, nor the Right Honourable Abraham, Viscount Mesopotamia, 'Baron of Canaan; no, no, they were plain Men, honest Country 'Grasiers, that took care of their Families and their Flocks. Moses was a great Prophet, and Aaron a priest of the Lord; but we never read of the Reverend Moses, nor the Right Reverend Father in God, Aaron, by Divine Providence, Lord Arch-Bishop of 'Israel: Thou never sawest Madam Rebecca in the Bible, my Lady Rachel: nor Mary, tho' a Princess of the Blood after the 'Death of Joseph, call'd the Princess Dowager of Nazareth; no, 'plain Rebecca, Rachel, Mary, or the Widow Mary, or the like: 'It was no Incivility then to mention their naked Names as they 'were expressed.'

"If common civility, and a generous Deportment among Mankind,

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be not put out of Countenance by the profound Reasoning of this Author, we hope they will continue to treat one another handsomely to the end of the World. We will not pretend an Answer to these Arguments against Modern Decency and Titles of Honour: yet one of our Club will undertake to prove, that tho' Abraham was not styl'd Right Honourable, yet he had the Title of Lord given him by his Wife Sarah, which he thinks entitles her to the Honour of My Lady Sarah; and Rachel being married into the same Family, he concludes she may deserve the Title of My Lady Rachel. But this is but the Opinion of one Man; it was never put to Vote in the Society."

The following, too, is quite in the spirit of Franklin :

"Upon the whole, Friend Janus, we may conclude, that the Anti-Couranteers are a sort of Precisians, who, mistaking Religion for the peculiar Whims of their own distemper'd Brain, are for cutting or stretching all men to their own Standard of Thinking. I wish Mr. Symmes's Character may secure him from the Woes and Curses they are so free of dispensing among their dissenting Neighbours, who are so unfortunate as to discover a Chearfulness becoming Christianity. Sir Thomas Hope Blount in his Essays, has said enough to convince us of the Unreasonableness of this sour Temper among Christians; and with his Words I shall conclude:

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'Certainly (says he) of all sorts of men, none do more mistake 'the Divine Nature, and by consequence do greater mischief to 'Religion, than those who would persuade us, That to be truly Religious, is to renounce all the Pleasures of Humane Life; As if 'Religion were a Caput Mortuum, a heavy, dull, insipid thing: 'that has neither Heat, Life, nor motion in it; Or were intended for C a Medusa's Head to transform Men into Monuments of Stone. 'Whereas (really) Religion is of an Active Principle, it not only 'elevates the Mind, and invigorates the Fancy; but it admits of 'Mirth, and pleasantness of Conversation, and indulges us in our 'Christian Liberties; and for this reason, says the Lord Bacon, It 'is no less impious to shut where God Almighty has open'd, than to 'open where God Almighty has shut. But, I say, if Men will suf'fer themselves to be thus impos'd upon, as to Believe That Religion 'requires any such unnecessary Rigours and Austerities, all that can 'be said is, The fault does not lye in Religion, but in their Under'standings; Nor is this to paint Religion like her self, but rather

'like one of the Furies with nothing but Whips and Snakes about 'her. And so, they Worship God just as the Indians do the Devil, 'not as they love him, but because they are afraid of him.'"

Thus our merry youth and his jovial friends strive to amuse and startle the Boston of 1723. He spoke the truth, but not all the truth. The brethren at whom he aimed his ridicule were seriously striving, with the best light they had, to become good and better men. To that end, they were making weekly and daily efforts. For that purpose, they went to church on Sundays, and, on week days went apart from the converse of men, to meditate on their ways and on their duty. They were on the watch against rising passions and turbulent desires; they were warring with the world, the flesh, and the devil. This was the advantage they had over their witty adversaries; and this was the reason why they at length prevailed. The brethren may have been going toward Jerusalem in a painful, roundabout, and irrational manner, but they were going. The young Couranters had not made up their minds whether or not there was a Jerusalem. To use Franklin's own simile, they were knocking out the bung of the beer-barrel, before providing the cask of wine. This was the course pursued by all the wits of that scoffing century, from Voltaire, downward; and that was the reason why, with all their genius and knowledge, they produced a merely transitory effect. The poor peasants who went to mass in Voltaire's village were doing their best to be good men. Voltaire was chiefly striving to show Europe what a witty man Voltaire was; and hence, the poor peasants were wiser in their generation than the children of light.

As a set-off to the heresies of the Courant, it should be mentioned that it was through that journal that the colonists first became acquainted with the sacred poems of Dr. Isaac Watts, who was then a poor and unknown English curate, with an income of a hundred pounds a year, of which he gave away one-third. The Courant published his psalms and hymns, from time to time, with warm commendation. To a generation accustomed to sing the doggerel of Sternhold and Hopkins, they must have seemed sublime indeed. Watts was always a favorite with Franklin, who, on his death-bed, heard him read with pleasure and emotion.

The Courant appears to have prospered under its young publisher. A month after James Franklin fell under the ban of the

council, we read in the Courant: "This Paper having met with so general an Acceptance in Town and Country, as to require a far greater number of them to be printed, than there is of the other publick Papers; and it being besides more generally read by a Vast Number of Borrowers, who do not take it in, the Publisher thinks proper to give this publick Notice for the Incouragement of those who would have Advertisements inserted in the publick Prints, which they may have printed in this Paper at a moderate price."

Three months later, the price of the paper was raised from three pence to four pence, and from ten shillings a year to twelve shillings.

CHAPTER VIII.

A RUNAWAY APPRENTICE.

As the gay Couranters commented so freely upon the ways of the brethren, their own conduct ought to have been most exemplary. It was not. Cotton Mather, who had all the stock classical allusions at his tongue's end, might have turned upon the conductors of the Courant, if he had had access to its sanctum, and said, "Young physicians, heal yourselves." James and Benjamin, brothers though they were, had not virtue enough between them to live together in tolerable peace. The elder was jealous of the younger's reputation. He was harsh and unjust to him; and Benjamin owns, in his autobiography, that "perhaps, he was too saucy and provoking." James did not know that he had the most valuable apprentice in the world, and the apprentice knew it too well.

Benjamin, however, had thrown himself most heartily into his brother's contest with the Council, had defended him ably in the Courant, and exerted all his talents in covering the persecutors with ridicule. Benjamin, I think, had a hand in getting up that article of six columns in the Courant of May 8, 1723, in which the illegality and unconstitutionality of the prosecution were demonstrated. We have a right to conclude, for many reasons, that the elder brother was the one most in fault.

The canceling of his indentures had set the apprentice free;