busy itself with any other mystery beneath the sun, rather than with the mystery of the composing stick, more especially when it is employed in the service of a newspaper. There is an atmosphere in a printer's office, which, some how or other, puts notions into boys' heads, and into men's heads, too,-an atmosphere which is very apt to make quick blood run quicker, and impulsive hearts beat higher, and active brains work harder, until those who were only indented to set up types for other people's thoughts, are suddenly found insisting on having other people to set up types for their own thoughts. So it has been, certainly, with more than one of your own most distinguished members, Mr. President,—your Russell, your Armstrong, and your Buckingham, the latter of whom has recently added a new claim to your regard, and to the regard of the community, by the preparation of an elaborate and excellent history of your Association.*

And so, certainly, it was with our young Boston printer's boy of 1718, whom not even journeyman's wages for the ninth year could tempt to serve out his time in mere type setting, and who even before the fifth year was fairly ended, availed himself of a tempting opportunity once more to assert his freedom, fled from his employer and family and native town, and who might have been seen, sometime in the year 1723, leaping ashore from on board of a little sloop at New York, a lad of only seventeen years old, without the least knowledge of any person in the place, and with very little money in his pocket. A few days afterwards he is found buying threepence worth of rolls out of a baker's shop in Philadelphia, and paying for them out of his last dollar, eating one of them himself from very hunger as he walked along Chestnut street, and washing it down with a draught of river water, giving the others to a poor woman and child whom he

* Annals of the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association, by Joseph T. Buckingham, 1853.

had met along the road, and at last finding his way into a Quaker meeting-house, and there falling asleep from utter fatigue and exhaustion;-a runaway apprentice, who might have been seized under the fugitive act, if such an act had existed in those days!

Thus ended the career of BENJAMIN FRANKLIN in his native city of Boston, and almost at that very moment, almost at that early age, and under those unpropitious and seemingly desperate circumstances, he commenced a career of well-nigh unequaled usefulness to his fellow men, and of well-nigh unequaled service and glory to his country. I am not about to attempt any detailed sketch of that brilliant career in the little remnant of an hour's discourse. It is so identified with the history of his country and of the whole civilized world in the age in which he lived, that volumes have been, and might again be, filled, without exhausting either its interest or its variety. Mr. Sparks has performed a service to the community, in his edition of Franklin's writings, with a biography prefixed, second only to that which he has rendered in the preparation of his noble edition of the life and writings of Washington. And I am glad to perceive that one of our younger literary men, lately connected with the evening press of the city, (Mr. Epes) Sargent,) has brought the life and writings of Franklin within the reach of every one, in a single volume, just published, containing almost everything that could be desired by an ordinary reader.

I have only alluded to that career, this evening, as presenting some striking circumstances, both of comparison and of contrast, with that of the great Syracusan philosopher and mechanic of antiquity, whose history I have just given you, and from a feeling which impressed itself upon my mind, on the first glance at the design of the diploma to which I have alluded, that the figure of Franklin resting on that old original printing-press of his,

which is still to be seen in the patent office at Washington, might well have formed a counterpart to the figure of Archimedes resting on his screw. Their names are connected with periods of history two thousand years apart, but they are still, and they will ever be, the names, which mechanics everywhere, and certainly in our own country, will remember and cherish, with an interest and a respect, which no other names in that long, long interval, can ever be permitted to share.

If Archimedes signalized his early ingenuity in discovering the defectiveness of King Hiero's crown, Franklin was second to no one in detecting and making manifest the defectiveness and worthlessness of all crowns, for any purposes of American free government.

If Archimedes by his burning mirrors drew down fire from the sun upon the foes of his country, Franklin caught the forked lightning upon his magic points, averted it from the homes of his fellow-men, and conducted it where it might be safely disarmed of its deadly proper

ties.

And, certainly, if Archimedes exhibited a sublime spectacle, in setting at defiance and holding at bay the whole power of imperial Rome on sea and on land, by his marvelous and tremendous enginery, literally laughing a siege to scorn,-Franklin, sending up his kite and holding his key in a thunder storm, in order to draw deliberately down upon himself the flaming bolts of heaven, that he might analyze their character and verify his theory for the good of mankind, presents a picture of even greater and nobler sublimity.

Franklin did not, indeed, devote himself to profound mathematical and geometrical problems and theorems. He lived in a larger and busier world than Archimedes ever conceived of, and at a period when the distractions of an unsettled and uncivilized state of society permitted but little devotion or attention to philosophy or science

5

of any sort. But he was not a whit behind the great Sicilian in the ingenuity and industry which he displayed, in devising and preparing the instruments and engines by which his countrymen were enabled to improve their condition in time of peace, and to defend their soil and their independence in time of war. And I know not any one in our own history, or in any other history, who, from the variety and multiplicity of the improvements, inventions, and practical suggestions, both for the purposes of peace and of war, of which he was the author, could so well be likened to that hundredhanded Briareus, to whom Marcellus compared the old philosopher of Sicily, as Benjamin Franklin.

Nothing seemed too lofty, nothing too low, for his regard. But the great aim of his mind, unlike that of Archimedes, was undoubtedly that which Lord Mahon in one of his late volumes ascribes to it ;-" whether in science and study, or in politics and action, the great aim of his mind was ever practical utility,"-and nothing could be juster or finer than the remark of Sir Humphrey Davy, that Franklin sought rather to make philosophy a useful inmate and servant in the common habitations of man, than to preserve her merely as an object of admiration in temples and palaces.

.

It is amazing, as we skim over the surface of his career ever so lightly, to contemplate the number and variety of his services to his fellow-men in all stations and conditions of life, and to reflect how many of our most valued institutions and establishments, for the welfare alike of the individual and of the state, were of his original suggestion and introduction.

See him, as early as 1731, setting on foot at Philadelphia, the first subscription library on this Continent, at a time when one of the great obstacles to improvement was the difficulty of access to books.

See him, the year after, commencing the publication of

that earliest serial, Poor Richard's Almanac, which was to supply the place of so many other books for the spare minutes of the laboring poor, and filling it with maxims and proverbs which made it a fountain of wisdom for every fireside where it found a place, as, indeed, it has remained to this day.

See him, in the city of his adoption, undertaking the improvement of the city watch, projecting the establishment of the first engine company for the extinguishment of fires, and soon after submitting a plan for paving, and cleaning, and lighting the streets.

Follow him a little further, and see him proposing and establishing the first philosophical society on our Continent, and afterwards laying the foundations of an institution for education, which ultimately grew up into the University of Pennsylvania.

See him inventing, at one moment, a fireplace, at the next, a lightning-rod, and at the next, a musical instrument making melody which his wife, at least, mistook for the music of angels.

Behold him, in the meantime, presiding with consummate ability and despatch over the Post Office department of the whole American Colonies,-an office which, considering the inadequacy of the means of communication within his command, must have required a hundred fold more of the hundred-handed faculty, than even now, when its duties and distances have been so incalculably multiplied.

See him, in time of war, too, or in anticipation of war, exhibiting the same marvelous facility and many-sided genius in providing for every exigency and emergency which the perils of his country might involve. The first of those volunteer militia companies, which are still among the best securities for law and order in our crowded cities, the very first of them, I believe, ever instituted on this Continent, were instituted under the auspices of Franklin,