this-that until between three and four hundred years past, there were no books in any other language; all the knowledge then contained in books, viz. the theology, the jurisprudence, the physic, the art-military, the politics, the mathematics, and mechanics, the natural and moral philosophy, the logic and rhetoric, the chemistry, the pharmacy, the architecture, and every other branch of science, being in those languages, it was of course necessary to learn them, as the gates through which men must pass to get at that knowledge.

"The books then existing were manuscript, and these consequently so dear, that only the few wealthy, inclined to learning, could afford to purchase them. The common people were not even at the pains of learning to read, because, after taking that pains, they would have nothing to read that they could understand, without learning the ancients' languages, nor then, without money to purchase the manuscripts. And so few were the learned readers sixty years after the invention of printing, that it appears, by letters still extant between the printers in 1499, that they could not throughout Europe find purchasers for more than three hundred copies of any ancient authors. But printing beginning now to make books cheap, the readers increased so much as to make it worth while to write and print books in the valgar tongues. At first these were chiefly books of devotion, and little histories; gradually several branches of science began to appear in the common languages; and, at this day, the whole body of science, consisting not only of translations from all the vuluable ancients, but of all the new modern discoveries, is to be met with in these languages; so that learning the ancient, for the purpose of acquiring knowledge, is become absolutely unnecessary.

"But there is in mankind an unaccountable prejudice in favour of ancient customs and habitudes, which inclines to a continuance of them after the circumstances, which formerly made them useful, cease to exist. A

multitude of instances might be given; but it may suffice to mention one. Hats were once thought an useful part of dress; they kept the head warm, and screened it from the violent impression of the sun's rays, and from the rain, snow, hail, &c. Though, by the way, this was not the more ancient opinion or practice, for among all the remains of antiquity, the bustos, statues, basso-relievos, medals, &c., which are infinite, there is no representative of a human figure with a cap or hat on, nor any covering for the head, unless it be the head of a soldier, who has a helmet, but that is evidently not a part of dress for health, but as a protection from the strokes of a weapon.

"At what time hats were first introduced, we know not; but in the last century they were universally worn throughout Europe. Gradually however, as the wearing of wigs and of hair nicely dressed prevailed, the putting on of hats was disused by genteel people, lest the curious arrangements of the curls and powdering should be disordered; and umbrellas began to supply their place; yet still our considering the hat as a part of dress continues so far to prevail, that a man of fashion is not thought dressed without having one, or something like one, about him, which he carries under his arm! So that there are a multitude of the politer people in all the courts and capital cities of Europe, who have never seen their fathers before them wear a hat otherwise than as a chapeau bras, though the utility of such a mode of wearing it is by no means apparent, and it is attended not only with some expence, but with a degree of constant trouble.

"The still prevailing custom of having schools for teaching generally our children, in these days, the Latin and Greek languages, I consider therefore in no other light than as the chapeau bras of modern lite

rature."

During the year 1745, while the mother country was shaken to the centre by the last rebellion in favour of the Stuarts, Mr Franklin was meditating

that complete retirement from public life to learned leisure, which his easy circumstances and philosophical taste alike suggested. He contracted a partnership in his printing business with David Hall, one of his most intelligent workmen, on the express condition of his retiring from all active management of its concerns: a connexion in which he found all his views fully answered, he says, for a period of eighteen years. About this time he became acquainted at Boston with a Mr Spence, from Europe, who first exhibited to him a few electrical experiments; and, by a happy concurrence of events, an old acquaintance of his in England, Peter Collinson, esq. J. K. S., presented, at the same period, to the Philadelphia Library Company an electric tube, accompanied with directions for its use. Franklin entered eagerly upon attempting the experiments he had seen, and readily acquired the practice of those described in the papers from England. He declares that, for his own part, he never was so totally engrossed with any object of study before; and that, being willing to diffuse the information he obtained as fast as he had made it his own, his house was for some time continually full of friends and acquaintances, crowding to see the wonders of the new science. Thus commenced the important researches of our author into this science. We shall have occasion to return to this topic more at length.

At present the local interests of the provinces were pressed upon his consideration, and began to be committed largely to his management. He was elected a member of the Pennsylvanian assembly, and allowed to vacate his seat as clerk in favour of his son: the governor placed him in the commission of the peace; while the corporation of Philadelphia called him into the common council, and he was shortly after chosen an alderman of the city. None of these honours, he declares, did he ever seek; but he admits they gratified his ambition. The clerkship of the assembly had become wearisome to his active mind;

he was almost indifferent to its emoluments; and the task of hearing and recording debates wherein he could take no part, was a trial of his patience from which he willingly escaped. He did not, however, long take an active part as a magistrate, finding himself, he says, too little acquainted with the common law to fill such a station with credit, and thus evincing a practical and modest self-knowledge, to which he owed much of his public consideration.

[EXTRACT.]

"To the late DR COTTON MATHER, of Boston. "REV. SIR,-I received your kind letter, with your excellent advice to the people of the United States, which I read with great pleasure, and hope it will be duly regarded. Such writings, though they may be lightly passed over by many readers, yet, if they make a deep impression on one active mind in a hundred, the effects may be considerable.

"Permit me to mention one little instance, which, though it relates to myself, will not be quite uninteresting to you. When I was a boy, I met with a book, entitled Essays to do Good,' which I think was written by your father. It had been so little regarded by a former possessor, that several leaves of it were torn out; but the remainder gave me such a turn of thinking, as to have an influence on my conduct through life; for I have always set a greater value on the character of a doer of good than any other kind of reputation; and if I have been, as you seem to think, a useful citizen, the public owes the advantage of it to that book.

"You mention your being in your seventy-eighth year. I am in my seventy-ninth. We are grown old together. It is now more than sixty years since I left Boston; but I remember well both father and grandfather, having heard them both in the pulpit, and seen them in their houses. The last time I saw your father was the beginning of 1724, when I visited

your

him after my first trip to Pennsylvania. He received me in his library; and, on my taking leave, shewed me a shorter way out of the house, through a narrow passage which was crossed by a beam over head. We were still talking as I withdrew, he accompanying me behind, and I turning partly towards him, when he said hastily, 'Stoop! stoop!' I did not understand him till I felt my head hit against the beam. He was a man who never missed any occasion of giving instruction; and upon this he said to me: 'You are young, and have the world before you: stoop as you go through it, and you will miss many hard thumps.' This advice, thus beat into my head, has frequently been of use to me; and I often think of it, when I see pride mortified, and misfortunes brought upon people by their carrying their heads too high.

"Perry, May 12th, 1784."

During the course of the year 1750, Mr Franklin, Mr Norris, and the speaker of the Pennsylvanian Assembly, were appointed commissioners to conduct a treaty with the Indians at Carlisle, whither they repaired accordingly. These unfortunate tribes had long imbibed one of the worst vices of their European neighbours, drunkenness, and when in liquor were very ungovernable. The commissioners, therefore, strictly prohibited the giving or selling to them spirits, while the business of their journey should be pending, but promised at the conclusion to give them abundance of their favourite liquor. The treaty was successful, and the rum accordingly given to them in their temporary cabins, forming a square in the neighbourhood of Carlisle, where they had congregated to the number of about a hundred men, women, and children. The commissioners, in the evening, were alarmed by a great noise which they heard among them, and, on approaching, found that they had made a bonfire in their square, and were fighting by whole families in groups, in all the rage of beastly intoxi