Though reckoning among his warm
friends and correspondents such men as David Hume, Dr.
friends and correspondents such men as David Hume, Dr.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v10 - Emp to Fro
»
___
Francis was permeated with the ideas of chivalry, and his language
was its phraseology. So much was he in love with chivalry that he
became the founder of a new order, whose patroness should be the
Lady Poverty. Never had there been a time in Europe since the de-
cay of the Roman empire, when poverty was more derided. Princes,
merchants, even many prelates and priests, neglected and contemned
the poor.
The voices of the outcasts and the leper went up to God,
and he sent their terrible echoes to awaken the heart of Francis.
In Sicily, Frederick II. -the Julian of the time-lived among
fountains and orange blossoms and gorgeous pomegranate arches,— a
type of the arrogant voluptuousness of the time, a voluptuousness
which Dante symbolized later as the leopard. Against this luxury
Francis put the lady of his love, Poverty. In the 'Poètes Francis-
canis, Frederick Ozanam says:-
"He thus designated what had become for him the ideal of all
perfection, the type of all moral beauty. He loved to personify
Poverty as the symbolic genius of his time; he imagined her as the
daughter of Heaven; and he called her by turns the lady of his
thoughts, his affianced, and his bride. "
The towns of Italy were continually at war, in 1206 and thereabout.
Francis was taken prisoner in a battle of his native townsmen with
the Perugians. Restless and depressed, unsatisfied by the revelry of
## p. 5921 (#509) ###########################################
ST. FRANCIS D'ASSISI
5921
his comrades, he threw himself into the train of the Count de Brienne,
who was making war on the German Emperor for the two Sicilies.
About this time, he was moved to give his fine military clothes to a
shivering soldier. At Spoleto, after this act of charity, he dreamed
that the voice of God asked what he valued most in life. "Earthly
fame," he said. —“But which of two is better for you,-the Master, or
the servant? And why will you forsake the Master for the servant,
the Lord for the slave ? »-«O Lord, what shall I do? " asked Fran-
cis. -"Return unto the city," said the voice, "and there it will be
told you what you shall do and how you may interpret this vision. "
He obeyed; he left the army; his old companions were glad to see
him, and again he joined the corti. But he was paler and more silent.
"You are in love! " his companions said, laughingly.
"I am in truth thinking of a bride more noble, more richly dow-
ered, and more beautiful than the world has ever seen. "
Pietro was away from home, and his son made donations to the
poor. He grew more tranquil, though the Voice had not explained
its message. He knelt at the foot of the crucifix one day in the old
chapel of St. Damian, and waited. Then the revelation came:-
"Francis, go to rebuild my house, which is falling into ruin! "
Francis took this command, which seemed to have come from the
lips of his crucified Redeemer, literally. It meant that he should re-
pair the chapel of St. Damian. Later, he accepted it in a broader
sense. More important things than the walls of St. Damian were
falling into ruin.
Francis was a man of action, and one who took life literally. He
went to his father's shop, chose some precious stuffs, and sold them
with his horse at Foliquo, for much below their value. Pietro had
brought Francis up in a princely fashion: why should he not behave
as a prince? And surely the father who had not grudged the richest
of his stuffs for the celebrations of the corti, would not object to their
sacrifice at the command of the Voice for the repairing of St. Damian!
Pietro, who had not heard the Voice, vowed vengeance on his son for
his foolishness. The priest at St. Damian's had refused the money;
but Francis threw it into the window, and Pietro, finding it, went
away swearing that his son had kept some of it. Francis wandered
about begging stones for the rebuilding of St. Damian's. Pietro,
maddened by the foolishness of his son, appealed to a magistrate.
Francis cast off all his garments, and gave them to his father. The
Bishop of Assisi covered his nakedness with his own mantle until the
gown of a poor laborer was brought to him. Dipping his right hand
in a pile of mortar, Francis drew a rough cross upon his breast:
"Pietro Bernardone," he said, "until now I have called you my father;
henceforth I can truly say, 'Our Father who art in heaven,' for he
is my wealth, and in him do I place all my hope. "
X-371
## p. 5922 (#510) ###########################################
ST. FRANCIS D'ASSISI
5922
Francis went away, to build his chapel and sing in the Provençal
speech hymns in honor of God and of love for his greatness. In
June 1208 he began to preach. He converted two men, one rich and
of rank, the other a priest. They gave all to the poor, and took up
their abode near a hospital for lepers. They had no home but the
chapel of the Angels, near the Portiuncula. This was the beginning
of the great order of the Friars Minors, the Franciscans.
Francis was the first poet to use the Italian speech
a poet who
was inspired to change the fate of Europe. "He would never," the
author of a recent monograph on St. Francis says, destroy or tread
on a written page. If it were Christian writing, it might contain
the name of God; even if it were the work of a pagan, it contained
the letters that make up the sacred name. When St. Francis, of the
people and singing for the people, wrote in the vernacular, he asked
Fra Pacifico, who had been a great poet in the world, to reduce his
verses to the rules of metre. "
«<
-
St. Bonaventura, Jacomino di Verona, and Jacopone di Todi, the
author of the Stabat Mater,' were Franciscans who followed in his
footsteps. "The Crusades were," to quote again, "defensive as well
as offensive. The Sultan, whom St. Francis visited and filled with
respect, was not far from Christendom. " Frederick of Sicily, with
his Saracens, menaced Assisi itself. Hideous doctrines and practices
were rife; and the thirty thousand friars who soon enrolled them-
selves in the band of Francis gained the love of the people, preached
Christianity anew, symbolized it rudely for folk that could not read,
and, as St. Francis had done, they appealed to the imagination. The
legends of St. Francis-one can find them in the 'Little Flowers,' of
which there are at least two good English translations - became the
tenderest poems of the poor.
If St. Francis had been less of a poet, he would have been less of
a saint. He died a poet, on October 4, 1225: he asked to be buried
on the Infernal Hill of Assisi, where the crusaders were laid to rest;
"and," he said, "sing my Canticle of the Sun,' so that I may add a
song in praise of my sister Death. The lines," he added, "will be
found at the end of the 'Cantico del Sole. '»
(
Paul Sabatier's 'Life of St. Francis,' and Mrs. Oliphant's, are best
known to English-speaking readers. The most exhaustive Life' is
by the Abbé Leon Le Monnier, in two volumes. It has lately been
translated into English.
manni Francis Egan
## p. 5923 (#511) ###########################################
ST. FRANCIS D'ASSISI
5923
ORDER
[Our Lord Speaks]
A
ND though I fill thy heart with hottest love,
Yet in true order must thy heart love me,
For without order can no virtue be;
By thine own virtue, then, I from above
Stand in thy soul; and so, most earnestly,
Must love from turmoil be kept wholly free:
The life of fruitful trees, the seasons of
The circling year move gently as a dove:
I measured all the things upon the earth;
Love ordered them, and order kept them fair,
And love to order must be truly wed.
O soul, why all this heat of little worth?
Why cast out order with no thought of care?
For by love's heat must love be governèd ?
Translation of Maurice Francis Egan.
THE CANTICLE OF THE SUN
[The title is Incipiunt Laudes Creaturarum quas fecit Franciscus ad Lau-
dem et Honorem Dei cum esset Infirmus ad Sanctum Damianum. ' It is
sometimes called the Canticle of the Creatures. › It is in Italian, and it
opens with these words: -"Altissimi, omnipotente, bon Signore, tue so le
laude la gloria e l'onore et omne benedictione. "]
O
MOST HIGH, Almighty, good Lord God, to thee belong praise,
glory, honor, and all blessing.
Praised be my Lord God, with all his creatures, and
specially our brother the sun, who brings us the day and who
brings us the light; fair is he, and he shines with a very great
splendor. O Lord, he signifies to us thee!
Praised be my Lord for our sister the moon, and for the stars,
the which he has set clear and lovely in heaven.
Praised be my Lord for our brother the wind, and for air and
clouds, calms and all weather, by which thou upholdest life in all
creatures.
Praised be my Lord for our sister water, who is very service-
able to us, and humble and precious and clean.
## p. 5924 (#512) ###########################################
5924
ST. FRANCIS D'ASSISI
Praised be my Lord for our brother fire, through whom thou
givest us light in the darkness; and he is bright and pleasant,
and very mighty and strong.
Praised be my Lord for our mother the earth, the which doth
sustain us and keep us, and bringest forth divers fruits, and
flowers of many colors, and grass.
Praised be my Lord for all those who pardon one another for
love's sake, and who endure weakness and tribulation; blessed are
they who peacefully shall endure, for thou, O Most High, wilt
give them a crown.
Praised be my Lord for our sister the death of the body, from
which no man escapeth. Woe to him who dieth in mortal sin.
Blessed are those who die in thy most holy will, for the second
death shall have no power to do them harm. Praise ye and bless
the Lord, and give thanks to him and serve him with great
humility.
[The last stanza, in praise of death, was added to the poem on the
day St. Francis left the world, October 4th, 1225. ]
Translation of Maurice Francis Egan.
## p. 5925 (#513) ###########################################
5925
100
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
(1706-1790)
BY JOHN BIGELOW
HE youngest of the four children of a Boston tallow-chandler
named Franklin was born a subject of Queen Anne of Eng-
land, on the 6th of January, 1706; and on the same day re-
ceived the baptismal name of Benjamin at the Old South Church in
that city. He continued for more than seventy of the eighty-four
years of his life a subject of four successive British monarchs. Dur-
ing that period, neither Anne nor either of the three Georges who
succeeded her had a subject of whom they had more reason to be
proud, nor one whom at his death their people generally supposed
they had more reason to detest. No Englishman of his generation
can now be said to have established a more enduring fame, in any
way, than Franklin established in many ways. As a printer, as a
journalist, as a diplomatist, as a statesman, as a philosopher, he was
easily first among his peers.
On the other hand, it is no disparagement of the services of any
of his contemporaries on either side of the Atlantic, to say that no
one of his generation contributed more effectually to the dissolution
of the bonds which united the principal British-American colonies to
the mother country, and towards conferring upon them independence
and a popular government.
As a practical printer Franklin was reported to have had no supe-
riors; as a journalist he exerted an influence not only unrivaled in his
day, but more potent, on this continent at least, than either of his
sovereigns or their Parliaments. The organization of police, and
later of the militia, for Philadelphia; of companies for extinguishing
fires; making the sweeping and paving of the streets a municipal
function; the formation of the first public library for Philadelphia,
and the establishment of an academy which has matured into the
now famous University of Pennsylvania, were among the conspicuous
reforms which he planted and watered in the columns of the Phila-
delphia Gazette. This journal he founded; upon the earnings of it
he mainly subsisted during a long life, and any sheet of it to-day
would bring a larger price in the open market probably than a single
sheet of any other periodical ever published.
## p. 5926 (#514) ###########################################
5926
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Franklin's Almanack, his crowning work in the sphere of jour-
nalism, published under the pseudonym of Richard Saunders, - better
known since as Poor Richard,—is still one of the marvels of modern
literature. Under one or another of many titles the contents of this
publication, exclusive of its calendars, have been translated into every
tongue having any pretensions to a literature; and have had more
readers, probably, than any other publication in the English or in-
deed in any other language, with the single exception of the Bible.
It was the first issue from an American press that found a popular
welcome in foreign lands, and it still enjoys the special distinction of
being the only almanac ever published that owed its extraordinary
popularity entirely to its literary merit.
What adds to the surprise with which we contemplate the fame
and fortunes of this unpretentious publication, is the fact that its
reputation was established by its first number, and when its author
was only twenty-six years of age. For a period of twenty-six years,
and until Franklin ceased to edit it, this annual was looked forward
to by a larger portion of the colonial population and with more
impatience than now awaits a President's annual message to Congress.
Franklin graduated from journalism into diplomacy as naturally.
as winter glides into spring. This was simply because he was by
common acclaim the fittest man for any kind of public service the
colony possessed, and especially for any duty requiring talents for
persuasion, in which he proved himself to be unquestionably past
master among the diplomatists of his time.
The question of taxing the Penn proprietary estates in Pennsyl-
vania, for the defense of the province from the French and Indians,
had assumed such an acute stage in 1757 that the Assembly decided
to petition the King upon the subject; and selected Franklin, then in
the forty-first year of his age, to visit London and present their peti-
tion. The next forty-one years of his life were practically all spent
in the diplomatic service. He was five years absent on this his first
mission. Every interest in London was against him. He finally sur-
mounted all obstacles by a compromise, which pledged the Assembly
to pass an act exempting from taxation the unsurveyed lands of the
Penn estate, the surveyed waste lands, however, to be assessed at
the usual rate. For his success the Penns and their partisans never
forgave him, and his fellow colonists never forgot him.
Franklin returned to Philadelphia in 1762, but not to remain.
The question of taxing the colonies without representation was soon
thrust upon them in the shape of a stamp duty, and Franklin was
sent out again to urge its repeal. He reached London in November
1764, where he remained the next eleven years and until it became
apparent that the surrender of the right to arbitrarily tax the
## p. 5927 (#515) ###########################################
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
5927
colonies would never be made by England during the life of the
reigning sovereign, George III. Satisfied that his usefulness in Eng-
land was at an end, he sailed for Philadelphia on the 21st of March,
1775; and on the morning of his arrival was elected by the Assembly
of Pennsylvania a delegate to the Continental Congress which con-
solidated the armies of the colonies, placed General George Washing-
ton in command of them, issued the first Continental currency, and
assumed the responsibility of resisting the imperial government; his
last hope of maintaining the integrity of the empire having been
dissipated by recent collisions between the people and the royalist
troops at Concord and Lexington. Franklin served on ten com-
mittees in this Congress. He was one of the five who drew up the
Declaration of Independence in July 1776, and in September following
was chosen unanimously as one of the three commissioners to be
sent out to solicit for the infant republic the aid of France and the
sympathies of continental Europe. In this mission, the importance
of which to his country can hardly be exaggerated, he was greatly
favored by the reputation which had preceded him as a man of
science. While yet a journalist he had made some experiments in
electricity, which established its identity with lightning. The publi-
cation by an English correspondent of the letters in which he gave
an account of these experiments, secured his election as an honorary
member of the Royal Society of London and undisputed rank among
the most eminent natural philosophers of his time. When he arrived
in Paris, therefore, he was already a member of every important
learned society in Europe, one of the managers of the Royal Society
of London, and one of the eight foreign members of the Royal Acad-
emy in Paris, where three editions of his scientific writings had
already been printed. To these advantages must be added another
of even greater weight: his errand there was to assist in dismember-
ing the British Empire, than which nothing of a political nature was
at this time much nearer every Frenchman's heart.
The history of this mission, and how Franklin succeeded in procur-
ing from the French King financial aid to the amount of twenty-six
millions of francs, at times when the very existence of the republic
depended upon them, and finally a treaty of peace more favorable to
his country than either England or France wished to concede, has
been often told; and there is no chapter in the chronicles of this
republic with which the world is more familiar.
Franklin's reputation grew with his success. "It was," wrote
his colleague John Adams, "more universal than that of Leibnitz or
Newton, Frederick the Great or Voltaire, and his character more
beloved and esteemed than all of them.
If a collection
could be made of all the gazettes of Europe for the latter half of the
·
## p. 5928 (#516) ###########################################
5928
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
eighteenth century, a greater number of panegyrical paragraphs upon
le grand Franklin would appear, it is believed, than upon any other
man that ever lived. "
A few weeks after signing the definitive treaty of peace in 1783,
Franklin renewed an application which he had previously made just
after signing the preliminary treaty, to be relieved of his mission;
but it was not until the 7th of March, 1785, that Congress adopted a
resolution permitting "the Honorable Benjamin Franklin to return
to America as soon as convenient. " Three days later, Thomas Jeffer-
son was appointed to succeed him.
On the 13th of September, 1785, and after a sojourn of nearly nine
years in the French capital, first in the capacity of commissioner and
subsequently of minister plenipotentiary, Franklin once more landed
in Philadelphia, on the same wharf on which, sixty-two years before,
he had stepped, a friendless and practically penniless runaway appren-
tice of seventeen.
Though now in his seventy-ninth year, and a prey to infirmities
not the necessary incidents of old age, he had scarcely unpacked his
trunks after his return when he was chosen a member of the munici-
pal council of Philadelphia, and its chairman. Shortly after, he was
elected president of Pennsylvania, his own vote only lacking to make
the vote unanimous. "I have not firmness," he wrote to a friend, "to
resist the unanimous desire of my countryfolks; and I find myself
harnessed again into their service another year. They engrossed the
prime of my life; they have eaten my flesh, and seem resolved now
to pick my bones. "
He was unanimously re-elected to this dignity for the two succeed-
ing years, and while holding that office was chosen a member of the
convention which met in May 1787 to frame the Constitution under
which the people of the United States are still living.
With the adoption of that instrument, to which he probably con-
tributed as much as any other individual, he retired from official life;
though not from the service of the public, to which for the remain-
ing years of his stay on earth his genius and his talents were faith-
fully consecrated.
Among the fruits of that unfamiliar leisure, always to be remem-
bered among the noblest achievements of his illustrious career, was
the part he had in organizing the first anti-slavery society in the
world; and as its president, writing and signing the first remonstrance
against slavery ever addressed to the Congress of the United States.
In surveying the life of Dr. Franklin as a whole, the thing that
most impresses one is his constant study and singleness of purpose
to promote the welfare of human society. It was his daily theme as
a journalist, and his yearly theme as an almanac-maker. It is that
## p. 5929 (#517) ###########################################
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
5929
which first occurs to us when we recall his career as a member of
the Colonial Assembly; as an agent of the provinces in England;
as a diplomatist in France; and as a member of the conventions
which crowned the consistent labors of his long life. Nor are there
any now so bold as to affirm that there was any other person who
could have been depended upon to accomplish for his country or the
world, what Franklin did in any of the several stages of his versatile
career.
Though holding office for more than half of his life, the office
always sought Franklin, not Franklin the office. When sent to Eng-
land as the agent of the colony, he withdrew from business with a
modest competence judiciously invested mostly in real estate. He
never seems to have given a thought to its increase. Frugal in his
habits, simple in his tastes, wise in his indulgences, he died with a
fortune neither too large nor too small for his fame as a citizen or a
patriot. For teaching frugality and economy to the colonists, when
frugality and economy were indispensable to the conservation of their
independence and manhood, he has been sneered at as the teacher of
a "candle-end-saving philosophy," and his 'Poor Richard' as a "col-
lection of receipts for laying up treasures on earth rather than in
heaven. " Franklin never taught, either by precept or example, to lay
up treasures on earth. He taught the virtues of industry, thrift, and
economy, as the virtues supremely important in his time, to keep
people out of debt and to provide the means of educating and digni-
fying society. He never countenanced the accumulation of wealth
for its own sake, but for its uses, -its prompt convertibility into
social comforts and refinements. It would be difficult to name
another man of any age to whom an ambition to accumulate wealth
as an end could be imputed with less propriety. Though probably
the most inventive genius of his age, and thus indirectly the founder
of many fortunes, he never asked a patent for any of his inventions
or discoveries. Though one of the best writers of the English
language that his country has yet produced, he never wrote a line
for money after he withdrew from the calling by which he made a
modest provision for his family.
For the remaining half of his life both at home and abroad,
though constantly operating upon public opinion by his pen, he
never availed himself of a copyright or received a penny from any
publisher or patron for any of these labors. In none of the public
positions which he held, even when minister plenipotentiary, did his
pay equal his expenditures. He was three years president of Penn-
sylvania after his return from France, and for his services declined to
appropriate to his own use anything beyond his necessary expendi-
tures for stationery, postage, and transportation. It is not by such.
## p. 5930 (#518) ###########################################
5930
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
methods that men justly incur the implied reproach of "laying up
treasures on earth," or of teaching a candle-end-saving philosophy.
Franklin courted fame no more than fortune. The best of his
writings, after his retirement from journalism, he never gave to the
press at all; not even his incomparable autobiography, which is still
republished more frequently than any of the writings of Dickens or
of Thackeray. He always wrote for a larger purpose than mere per-
sonal gratification of any kind. Even his bagatelles and jeux d'esprit
read in the salons of Paris, though apparently intended for the eyes
of a small circle, were inspired by a desire to make friends and
create respect for the struggling people and the great cause he rep-
resented. Few if any of them got into print until many years after
his decease.
Franklin was from his youth up a leader, a lion in whatever
circle he entered, whether in the printing-house, the provincial As-
semblies, as agent in England, or as a courtier in France. There
was no one too eminent in science or literature, on either side of
the Atlantic, not to esteem his acquaintance a privilege. He was
an honorary member of every important scientific association in the
world, and in friendly correspondence with most of those who con-
ferred upon those bodies any distinction; and all this by force of a
personal, not to say planetary, attraction that no one brought within
his sphere could long resist.
Pretty much all of importance that we know of Franklin we
gather from his private correspondence. His contemporaries wrote
or at least printed very little about him; scarcely one of the multi-
tude whose names he embalmed in his 'Autobiography' ever printed
a line about him. All that we know of the later half of his life not
covered by his autobiography, we owe almost exclusively to his pri-
vate and official correspondence.
Though reckoning among his warm
friends and correspondents such men as David Hume, Dr. Joseph
Priestley, Dr. Price, Lord Kames, Lord Chatham, Dr. Fothergill,
Peter Collinson, Edmund Burke, the Bishop of St. Asaph and his
gifted daughters, Voltaire, the habitués of the Helvétius salon, the
Marquis de Ségur, the Count de Vergennes, his near neighbors De
Chaumont and Le Veillard, the maire of Passy,- all that we learn of
his achievements, of his conversation, of his daily life, from these or
many other associates of only less prominence in the Old World,
might be written on a single foolscap sheet.
Nor are we under
much greater obligations to his American friends. It is to his own
letters (and except his 'Autobiography,' he can hardly be said to
have written anything in any other than the epistolary form; and
that was written in the form of a letter to his son William, and most
of it only began to be published a quarter of a century after his
## p. 5931 (#519) ###########################################
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
5931
death) that we must turn to learn how full of interest and importance
to mankind was this last half-century of his life. Beyond keeping
copies of his correspondence, which his official character made a duty
as well as a necessity, he appears to have taken no precautions to
insure the posthumous fame to which his correspondence during that
period was destined to contribute so much. Hence, all the biogra-
phies and they are numberless - owe almost their entire interest
and value to his own pen. All, so far as they are biographies, are
autobiographies; and for that reason it may be fairly said that all of
them are interesting.
It is also quite remarkable that though Franklin's life was a con-
tinuous warfare, he had no personal enemies. His extraordinary and
even intimate experience of every phase of human life, from the very
lowest to the very highest, had made him so tolerant that he regarded
differences of opinion and of habits much as he regarded the changes
of the weather, -as good or bad for his purposes, but which, though
he might sometimes deplore, he had no right to quarrel with or
assume personal responsibility for. Hence he never said or did things
personally offensive. The causes that he represented had enemies,
for he was all his life a reformer. All men who are good for any-
thing have such enemies. "I have, as you observe," wrote Franklin
to John Jay the year that he retired from the French mission, "some
enemies in England, but they are my enemies as an American; I
have also two or three in America who are my enemies as a minis-
ter; but I thank God there are not in the whole world any who
are my enemies as a man: for by his grace, through a long life, I
have been enabled so to conduct myself that there does not exist a
human being who can justly say, 'Ben Franklin has wronged me. '
This, my friend, is in old age a comfortable reflection. You too have
or may have your enemies; but let not that render you unhappy. If
you make a right use of them, they will do you more good than
harm. They point out to us our faults; they put us upon our guard
and help us to live more correctly. "
Franklin's place in literature as a writer has not been generally
appreciated, probably because with him writing was only a means,
never an end, and his ends always dwarfed his means, however
effective. He wrote to persuade others, never to parade his literary
skill. He never wrote a dull line, and was never nimious.
The long-
est production of his pen was his autobiography, written during the
closing years of his life. Nearly all that he wrote besides was in the
form of letters, which would hardly average three octavo pages in
length. And yet whatever the subject he touched upon, he never
left the impression of incompleteness or of inconclusiveness. Of him
may be said, perhaps with as much propriety as of any other man,
## p. 5932 (#520) ###########################################
5932
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
that he never said a word too soon, nor a word too late, nor a word
too much. Tons of paper have been devoted to dissuasives from duel-
ing, but the argument was never put more effectively than Frank-
lin put it in these dozen lines of a letter to a Mr. Percival, who had
sent him a volume of literary and moral dissertations.
"A gentleman in a coffee-house desired another to sit further from him.
(Why so? Because you stink. )-(That is an affront, and you must fight
me. ' 'I will fight you if you insist upon it, but I do not see how that will
mend the matter. For if you kill me, I shall stink too; and if I kill you, you
will stink, if possible, worse than at present. How can such miserable sin-
ners as we are, entertain so much pride as to conceit that every offense
against our imagined honor merits death? These petty princes, in their opin-
ion, would call that sovereign a tyrant who should put one of them to death
for a little uncivil language, though pointed at his sacred person; yet every
one of them makes himself judge in his own cause, condemns the offender
without a jury, and undertakes himself to be the executioner. »
Some one wrote him that the people in England were abusing the
Americans and speaking all manner of evil against them. Franklin
replied that this was natural enough:
"They impute to us the evil they wished us. They are angry with us, and
speak all manner of evil of us; but we flourish notwithstanding. They put
me in mind of a violent High Church factor, resident in Boston when I was a
boy. He had bought upon speculation a Connecticut cargo of onions which he
flattered himself he might sell again to great profit; but the price fell, and
they lay upon his hands. He was heartily vexed with his bargain, especially
when he observed they began to grow in his store he had filled with them.
He showed them one day to a friend. Here they are,' said he, 'and they are
growing too. I damn them every day, but I think they are like the Presby-
terians; the more I curse them, the more they grow. >»
Mr. Jefferson tells us that Franklin was sitting by his side in the
convention while the delegates were picking his famous declaration
of Independence to pieces, and seeing how Jefferson was squirming
under their mutilations, comforted him with the following stories, the
rare excellence of which has given them a currency which has long
since worn off their novelty: -
"I have made it a rule,' said he, whenever in my power, to avoid
becoming the draftsman of papers to be reviewed by a public body. I took
my lesson from an incident which I will relate to you.
<<<When I was a journeyman printer, one of my companions, an appren
ticed hatter, having served out his time, was about to open shop for himself.
His first concern was to have a handsome sign-board with the proper inscrip-
tion. He composed it in these words: John Thompson, Hatter, makes and
sells Hats for ready Money, with a figure of a hat subjoined. But he thought
he would submit it to his friends for their amendments. The first he showed
## p. 5933 (#521) ###########################################
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
5933
it to thought the word hatter tautologous, because followed by the words
makes hats, which showed he was a hatter. It was struck out. The next
observed that the word makes might as well be omitted, because his customers
would not care who made the hats; if good and to their mind, they would buy,
by whomsoever made. He struck it out. A third said he thought the words
for ready money were useless, as it was not the custom of the place to sell on
credit: every one who purchased expected to pay. They were parted with,
and the inscription now stood, John Thompson sells hats.
«Sells hats," says
his next friend; "why, nobody will expect you to give them away. What
then is the use of that word? " It was stricken out, and hats followed, the
rather as there was one painted on the board. So his inscription was ulti-
mately reduced to John Thompson, with the figure of a hat subjoined. »»
When the members were about to sign the document, Mr. Han-
cock is reported to have said, "We must be unanimous; there must
be no pulling different ways; we must all hang together. " "Yes,"
replied Franklin, "we must indeed all hang together, or most assur-
edly we shall all hang separately. "
The Doric simplicity of his style; his incomparable facility of con-
densing a great principle into an apologue or an anecdote, many of
which, as he applied them, have become the folk-lore of all nations;
his habitual moderation of statement, his aversion to exaggeration,
his inflexible logic, and his perfect truthfulness,- made him one of
the most persuasive men of his time, and his writings a model which
no one can study without profit. A judicious selection from Frank-
lin's writings should constitute a part of the curriculum of every
college and high school that aspires to cultivate in its pupils a pure
style and correct literary taste.
There was one incident in Franklin's life, which, though more fre-
quently referred to in terms of reproach than any other, will probably
count for more in his favor in the Great Assize than any other of
his whole life. While yet in his teens he became a father before he
was a husband. He never did what men of the loftiest moral pre-
tensions not unfrequently do, shirk as far as possible any personal
responsibility for this indiscretion. On the contrary, he took the
fruit of it to his home; gave him the best education the schools of
the country then afforded. When he went abroad, this son accom-
panied him, was presented as his son wherever he went, was pre-
sented in all the great houses in which he himself was received; he
entered him at the Inns of Court, and in due time had him admitted
to the English bar; made him his private secretary, and at an early
age caused him to be appointed by the Crown, Governor of New
Jersey. The father not only did everything to repair the wrong he
had done his son, but at a time when he was at the zenith of his
fame and official importance, publicly proclaimed it as one of the
## p. 5934 (#522) ###########################################
5934
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
great errors of his life. The world has always abounded with bas-
tards; but with the exception of crowned heads claiming to hold.
their sceptres by Divine right, and therefore beyond the reach of
popular criticism or reproach, it would be difficult to name another
parent of his generation of anything like corresponding eminence
with Franklin, who had the courage and the magnanimity to expiate
such a wrong to his offspring so fully and effectively.
Franklin was not a member of the visible Church, nor did he
ever become the adherent of any sect. He was three years younger
than Jonathan Edwards, and in his youth heard his share of the then
prevailing theology of New England, of which Edwards was regarded,
and perhaps justly, as the most eminent exponent. The extremes to
which Edwards carried those doctrines at last so shocked the people
of Massachusetts that he was rather ignominiously expelled from his
pulpit at Northampton; and the people of Massachusetts, in very con-
siderable proportions, gradually wandered over into the Unitarian
communion. To Jonathan Edwards and the inflexible law of action
and reaction, more than to Priestley or any one else of their genera-
tion, that sect owes to this day its numerical strength, its influence,
and its dignity, in New England. With the creed of that sect Dr.
Franklin had more in common than with any other, though he was
much too wise a man to suppose that there was but one gate of
admission to the Holy City. He believed in one God; that Jesus was
the best man that ever lived, and his example the most profitable
one ever given us to follow. He never succeeded in accepting the
doctrine that Jehovah and Jesus were one person, or that miracles
attributed to the latter in the Bible were ever worked. He thought
the best service and sufficient worship of God was in doing all the
goo ve can to his creatures. He therefore never occupied himself
much with ecclesiastical ceremonies, sectarian differences, or theologi-
cal subtleties. A reverend candidate for episcopal orders wrote to
Franklin, complaining that the Archbishop of Canterbury had refused
to ordain him unless he would take the oath of allegiance, which he
was too patriotic a Yankee to do. Franklin, in reply, asked what
necessity there was for his being connected with the Church of Eng-
land; if it would not be as well were it the Church of Ireland. Per-
haps were he to apply to the Bishop of Derry, who was a man of
liberal sentiments, he might give him orders, as of that Church.
Should both England and Ireland refuse, Franklin assumed that the
Bishops of Sweden and Norway would refuse also, unless the candi-
dates embraced Lutheranism. He then added:-
"Next to becoming Presbyterians, the Episcopalian clergy of America, in
my humble opinion, cannot do better than to follow the example of the first
clergy of Scotland, soon after the conversion of that country to Christianity.
## p. 5935 (#523) ###########################################
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
5935
When the King had built the cathedral of St. Andrew's, and requested the
King of Northumberland to lend his bishops to ordain one for them, that their
clergy might not as heretofore be obliged to go to Northumberland for orders,
and their request was refused, they assembled in the cathedral, and the
mitre, crosier, and robes of a bishop being laid upon the altar, they after
earnest prayers for direction in their choice elected one of their own number;
when the King said to him, "Arise, go to the altar, and receive your office
at the hand of God. " His brethren led him to the altar, robed him, put the
crosier in his hand and the mitre on his head, and he became the first
Bishop of Scotland.
"If the British islands were sunk in the sea (and the surface of this globe
has suffered great changes), you would probably take some such method as
this; and if they persist in denying your ordination, it is the same thing. A
hundred years hence, when people are more enlightened, it will be wondered
at that men in America, qualified by their learning and piety to pray for and
instruct their neighbors, should not be permitted to do it till they had made
a voyage of six thousand miles out and home, to ask leave of a cross old
gentleman at Canterbury. »
Franklin, however, was in no sense an agnostic. What he could
not understand he did not profess to understand or believe; neither
was he guilty of the presumption of holding that what he could not
understand, he might not have understood if he had been a wiser and
better man. Though impatient of cant and hypocrisy, especially in
the pulpit, he never spoke lightly of the Bible, or of the Church and
its offices. When his daughter Sally was about to marry, he wrote
to her: :-
"My dear child, the natural prudence and goodness of heart God has blest
you with, make it less necessary for me to be particular in giving you ad-
vice. I shall therefore only say, that the more attentively dutiful and tender
you are towards your good mamma, the more you will recommend yourself
to me. But why should I mention me, when you have so much higher a
promise in the Commandments, that such conduct will recommend you to the
favor of God? You know I have many enemies, all indeed on the public
account (for I cannot recollect that I have in a private capacity given just
cause of offense to any one whatever): yet they are enemies, and very bitter
ones; and you must expect their enmity will extend in some degree to you,
so that your slightest indiscretions will be magnified into crimes, in order the
more sensibly to wound and afflict me. It is therefore the more necessary for
you to be extremely circumspect in all your behavior, that no advantage may
be given to their malevolence.
"Go constantly to church, whoever preaches. The act of devotion in the
Common Prayer Book is your principal business there, and if properly at-
tended to will do more towards amending the heart than sermons generally
can do. For they were composed by men of much greater piety and wisdom
than our common composers of sermons can pretend to be; and therefore I
wish you would never miss the prayer days: yet I do not mean you should
## p. 5936 (#524) ###########################################
5936
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
despise sermons, even of the preachers you dislike, for the discourse is often
much better than the man, as sweet and clear waters come through very dirty
earth. I am the more particular on this head, as you seemed to express a
little before I came away some inclination to leave our church, which I would
not have you do. "
I cannot more fitly close this imperfect sketch of America's most
illustrious citizen, than by quoting from a touching and most affec-
tionate letter from Mrs. Hewson (Margaret Stevenson),- one of Frank-
lin's worthiest, most faithful, and most valued friends,- addressed to
one of Franklin's oldest friends in England.
"We have lost that valued, venerable, kind friend whose knowledge en-
lightened our minds and whose philanthropy warmed our hearts. But we have
the consolation to think that if a life well spent in acts of universal benevo-
lence to mankind, a grateful acknowledgment of Divine favor, a patient sub-
mission under severe chastisement, and an humble trust in Almighty mercy,
can insure the happiness of a future state, our present loss is his gain. I was
the faithful witness of the closing scene, which he sustained with that calm
fortitude which characterized him through life. No repining, no peevish ex-
pression ever escaped him during a confinement of two years, in which, I
believe, if every moment of ease could be added together, would not amount
to two whole months. When the pain was not too violent to be amused, he
employed himself with his books, his pen, or in conversation with his friends;
and upon every occasion displayed the clearness of his intellect and the cheer-
fulness of his temper. Even when the intervals from pain were so short that
his words were frequently interrupted, I have known him to hold a discourse
in a sublime strain of piety. I say this to you because I know it will give
you pleasure.
"I never shall forget one day that I passed with our friend last summer.
I found him in bed in great agony; but when that agony abated a little I
asked if I should read to him. He said yes; and the first book I met with
was Johnson's 'Lives of the Poets. I read the Life of Watts,' who was a
favorite author with Dr. Franklin; and instead of lulling him to sleep, it
roused him to a display of the powers of his memory and his reason. He
repeated several of Watts's Lyric Poems, and descanted upon their sub-
limity in a strain worthy of them and of their pious author. It is natural for
us to wish that an attention to some ceremonies had accompanied that religion
of the heart which I am convinced Dr. Franklin always possessed; but let us
who feel the benefit of them continue to practice them, without thinking
lightly of that piety which could support pain without a murmur, and meet
death without terror. »
Franklin made a somewhat more definite statement of his views
on the subject of religion, in reply to an inquiry from President
Styles of Yale College, who expressed a desire to know his opinion
of Jesus of Nazareth. Franklin's reply was written the last year of
his life, and in the eighty-fourth of his age: -
## p. 5937 (#525) ###########################################
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
5937
"You desire to know something of my religion. It is the first time I have
been questioned upon it. But I cannot take your curiosity amiss, and shall
endeavor in a few words to gratify it. Here is my creed. I believe in one
God, the creator of the universe. That he governs it by his Providence. That
he ought to be worshiped. That the most acceptable service we render to
him is doing good to his other children. That the soul of man is immortal,
and will be treated with justice in another life respecting its conduct in this.
These I take to be the fundamental points in all sound religion, and I regard
them as you do in whatever sect I meet with them.
"As to Jesus of Nazareth, my opinion of whom you particularly desire,
I think his system of morals and his religion, as he left them to us, the best
the world ever saw or is like to see; but I apprehend it has received various
corrupting changes, and I have, with most of the present Dissenters in Eng-
land, some doubts as to his Divinity; though it is a question I do not dogma-
tize upon, having never studied it, and think it needless to busy myself with
it now, when I expect soon an opportunity of knowing the truth with less
trouble. I see no harm, however, in its being believed, if that belief has the
good consequence, as probably it has, of making his doctrines more respected
and more observed; especially as I do not perceive that the Supreme takes it
amiss, by distinguishing the unbelievers in his government of the world with
any peculiar marks of his displeasure.
"I shall only add, respecting myself, that, having experienced the goodness
of that Being in conducting me prosperously through a long life, I have no
doubt of its continuance in the next, though without the smallest conceit of
meriting such goodness. My sentiments on this head you will see in the copy
of an old letter inclosed, which I wrote in answer to one from an old religion-
ist whom I had relieved in a paralytic case by electricity, and who, being
afraid I should grow proud upon it, sent me his serious though rather imper-
tinent caution. »
W Bigston
евт
OF FRANKLIN'S FAMILY AND EARLY LIFE
From the Autobiography,' in Bigelow's Edition of Franklin's Works
J
OSIAH, my father, married young, and carried his wife with
three children into New England about 1682. The conven-
ticles having been forbidden by law and frequently dis-
turbed, induced some considerable men of his acquaintance to
remove to that country, and he was prevailed with to accompany
them thither, where they expected to enjoy their mode of reli-
gion with freedom. By the same wife he had four children more
X-372
## p. 5938 (#526) ###########################################
5938
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
born there, and by a second wife ten more, in all seventeen; of
which I remember thirteen sitting at one time at his table, who
all grew up to be men and women, and married. I was the
youngest son and the youngest child but two, and was born in
Boston, New England. My mother, the second wife, was Abiah
Folger, daughter of Peter Folger, one of the first settlers of New
England, of whom honorable mention is made by Cotton Mather
in his church history of that country, entitled 'Magnalia Christi
Americana,' as "a goodly, learned Englishman," if I remember
the words rightly. I have heard that he wrote sundry small
occasional pieces, but only one of them was printed, which I saw
now many years since.
My elder brothers were all put apprentices to different trades.
I was put to the grammar school at eight years of age, my
father intending to devote me, as the tithe of his sons, to the
service of the Church. My early readiness in learning to read
(which must have been very early, as I do not remember when
I could not read), and the opinion of all his friends that I should
certainly make a good scholar, encouraged him in this purpose
of his. My uncle Benjamin too approved of it, and proposed
to give me all his short-hand volumes of sermons,- I
suppose
as a stock to set up with,-if I would learn his character. I
continued, however, at the grammar school not quite one year,
though in that time I had risen gradually from the middle of
the class of that year to be the head of it, and farther was re-
moved into the next class above it, in order to go with that into
the third at the end of the year. But my father in the mean
time, from a view of the expense of a college education, which
having so large a family he could not well afford, and the mean
living many so educated were afterwards able to obtain,― reasons
that he gave to his friends in my hearing,- altered his first
intention, took me from the grammar school, and sent me to a
school for writing and arithmetic, kept by a then famous man,
Mr. George Brownell, very successful in his profession generally,
and that by mild, encouraging methods. Under him I acquired
fair writing pretty soon, but I failed in the arithmetic, and made
no progress in it. At ten years old I was taken home to assist
my father in his business, which was that of a tallow-chandler
and soap-boiler,-a business he was not bred to, but had as-
sumed on his arrival in New England, and on finding his dyeing
trade would not maintain his family, being in little request.
--
## p. 5939 (#527) ###########################################
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
5939
Accordingly I was employed in cutting wick for the candles,
filling the dipping-mold and the molds for cast candles, attending
the shop, going of errands, etc.
I disliked the trade, and had a strong inclination for the sea,
but my father declared against it: however, living near the
water, I was much in and about it, learnt early to swim well
and to manage boats; and when in a boat or canoe with other
boys I was commonly allowed to govern, especially in any case
of difficulty; and upon other occasions I was generally a leader
among the boys, and sometimes led them into scrapes, of which
I will mention one instance, as it shows an early projecting pub-
lic spirit, though not then justly conducted.
There was a salt-marsh that bounded part of the mill-pond,
on the edge of which, at high water, we used to stand to fish
for minnows. By much trampling we had made it a mere quag-
mire. My proposal was to build a wharf there, fit for us to stand.
upon; and I showed my comrades a large heap of stones which
were intended for a new house near the marsh, and which would
very well suit our purpose. Accordingly, in the evening, when
the workmen were gone, I assembled a number of my playfel-
lows, and working with them diligently like so many emmets,
sometimes two or three to a stone, we brought them all away
and built our little wharf. The next morning the workmen
were surprised at missing the stones, which were found in our
wharf. Inquiry was made after the removers; we were discov-
ered and complained of; several of us were corrected by our
fathers, and though I pleaded the usefulness of the work, mine
convinced me that nothing was useful which was not honest.
I continued thus employed in my father's business for two
years, that is, till I was twelve years old; and my brother John,
who was bred to that business, having left my father, mar-
ried, and set up for himself at Rhode Island, there was all
appearance that I was destined to supply his place and become
a tallow-chandler. But my dislike to the trade continuing, my
father was under apprehensions that if he did not find one for
me more agreeable, I should break away and get to sea, as his
son Josiah had done, to his great vexation. He therefore some-
times took me to walk with him, and see joiners, bricklayers,
turners, braziers, etc. , at their work, that he might observe my
inclination, and endeavor to fix it on some trade or other on land.
It has ever since been a pleasure to me to see good workmen
## p. 5940 (#528) ###########################################
5940
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
handle their tools; and it has been useful to me, having learnt
so much by it as to be able to do little jobs myself in my house
when a workman could not readily be got, and to construct little
machines for my experiments, while the intention of making the
experiment was fresh and warm in my mind. My father at
last fixed upon the cutler's trade, and my uncle Benjamin's son
Samuel, who was bred to that business in London, being about
that time established in Boston, I was sent to be with him some
time on liking. But his expectations of a fee with me displeas-
ing my father, I was taken home again.
From a child I was fond of reading, and all the little money
that came into my hands was ever laid out in books. Pleased
with the Pilgrim's Progress,' my first collection was of John
Bunyan's works in separate little volumes. I afterward sold them
to enable me to buy R. Burton's Historical Collections'; they
were small chapmen's books, and cheap, 40 or 50 in all. My
father's little library consisted chiefly of books in polemic divin-
ity, most of which I read, and have since often regretted that at
a time when I had such a thirst for knowledge, more proper
books had not fallen in my way, since it was now resolved I
should not be a clergyman. Plutarch's Lives there was, in which
I read abundantly, and I still think that time spent to great ad-
vantage. There was also a book of De Foe's, called 'An Essay
on Projects,' and another of Dr. Mather's, called 'Essays To Do
Good,' which perhaps gave me a turn of thinking that had an
influence on some of the principal future events of my life.
This bookish inclination at length determined my father to
make me a printer, though he had already one son (James) of
that profession. In 1717 my brother James returned from Eng-
land with a press and letters, to set up his business in Boston.
I liked it much better than that of my father, but still had a
hankering for the sea. To prevent the apprehended effect of
such an inclination, my father was impatient to have me bound
to my brother. I stood out some time, but at last was per-
suaded, and signed the indentures when I was yet but twelve
years old.
I was to serve as an apprentice till I was twenty-one
years of age, only I was to be allowed journeyman's wages dur-
ing the last year. In a little time I made great proficiency in
the business, and became a useful hand to my brother.
I now
had access to better books. An acquaintance with the appren-
tices of booksellers enabled me sometimes to borrow a small
## p. 5941 (#529) ###########################################
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
5941
one, which I was careful to return soon and clean. Often I sat
up in my room reading the greatest part of the night, when the
book was borrowed in the evening and to be returned early in
the morning, lest it should be missed or wanted.
FRANKLIN'S JOURNEY TO PHILADELPHIA: HIS ARRIVAL
THERE
From the Autobiography,' in Bigelow's Edition of Franklin's Works
(
I
PROCEEDED on my journey on foot, having fifty miles to Bur-
lington, where I was told I should find boats that would carry
me the rest of the way to Philadelphia.
___
Francis was permeated with the ideas of chivalry, and his language
was its phraseology. So much was he in love with chivalry that he
became the founder of a new order, whose patroness should be the
Lady Poverty. Never had there been a time in Europe since the de-
cay of the Roman empire, when poverty was more derided. Princes,
merchants, even many prelates and priests, neglected and contemned
the poor.
The voices of the outcasts and the leper went up to God,
and he sent their terrible echoes to awaken the heart of Francis.
In Sicily, Frederick II. -the Julian of the time-lived among
fountains and orange blossoms and gorgeous pomegranate arches,— a
type of the arrogant voluptuousness of the time, a voluptuousness
which Dante symbolized later as the leopard. Against this luxury
Francis put the lady of his love, Poverty. In the 'Poètes Francis-
canis, Frederick Ozanam says:-
"He thus designated what had become for him the ideal of all
perfection, the type of all moral beauty. He loved to personify
Poverty as the symbolic genius of his time; he imagined her as the
daughter of Heaven; and he called her by turns the lady of his
thoughts, his affianced, and his bride. "
The towns of Italy were continually at war, in 1206 and thereabout.
Francis was taken prisoner in a battle of his native townsmen with
the Perugians. Restless and depressed, unsatisfied by the revelry of
## p. 5921 (#509) ###########################################
ST. FRANCIS D'ASSISI
5921
his comrades, he threw himself into the train of the Count de Brienne,
who was making war on the German Emperor for the two Sicilies.
About this time, he was moved to give his fine military clothes to a
shivering soldier. At Spoleto, after this act of charity, he dreamed
that the voice of God asked what he valued most in life. "Earthly
fame," he said. —“But which of two is better for you,-the Master, or
the servant? And why will you forsake the Master for the servant,
the Lord for the slave ? »-«O Lord, what shall I do? " asked Fran-
cis. -"Return unto the city," said the voice, "and there it will be
told you what you shall do and how you may interpret this vision. "
He obeyed; he left the army; his old companions were glad to see
him, and again he joined the corti. But he was paler and more silent.
"You are in love! " his companions said, laughingly.
"I am in truth thinking of a bride more noble, more richly dow-
ered, and more beautiful than the world has ever seen. "
Pietro was away from home, and his son made donations to the
poor. He grew more tranquil, though the Voice had not explained
its message. He knelt at the foot of the crucifix one day in the old
chapel of St. Damian, and waited. Then the revelation came:-
"Francis, go to rebuild my house, which is falling into ruin! "
Francis took this command, which seemed to have come from the
lips of his crucified Redeemer, literally. It meant that he should re-
pair the chapel of St. Damian. Later, he accepted it in a broader
sense. More important things than the walls of St. Damian were
falling into ruin.
Francis was a man of action, and one who took life literally. He
went to his father's shop, chose some precious stuffs, and sold them
with his horse at Foliquo, for much below their value. Pietro had
brought Francis up in a princely fashion: why should he not behave
as a prince? And surely the father who had not grudged the richest
of his stuffs for the celebrations of the corti, would not object to their
sacrifice at the command of the Voice for the repairing of St. Damian!
Pietro, who had not heard the Voice, vowed vengeance on his son for
his foolishness. The priest at St. Damian's had refused the money;
but Francis threw it into the window, and Pietro, finding it, went
away swearing that his son had kept some of it. Francis wandered
about begging stones for the rebuilding of St. Damian's. Pietro,
maddened by the foolishness of his son, appealed to a magistrate.
Francis cast off all his garments, and gave them to his father. The
Bishop of Assisi covered his nakedness with his own mantle until the
gown of a poor laborer was brought to him. Dipping his right hand
in a pile of mortar, Francis drew a rough cross upon his breast:
"Pietro Bernardone," he said, "until now I have called you my father;
henceforth I can truly say, 'Our Father who art in heaven,' for he
is my wealth, and in him do I place all my hope. "
X-371
## p. 5922 (#510) ###########################################
ST. FRANCIS D'ASSISI
5922
Francis went away, to build his chapel and sing in the Provençal
speech hymns in honor of God and of love for his greatness. In
June 1208 he began to preach. He converted two men, one rich and
of rank, the other a priest. They gave all to the poor, and took up
their abode near a hospital for lepers. They had no home but the
chapel of the Angels, near the Portiuncula. This was the beginning
of the great order of the Friars Minors, the Franciscans.
Francis was the first poet to use the Italian speech
a poet who
was inspired to change the fate of Europe. "He would never," the
author of a recent monograph on St. Francis says, destroy or tread
on a written page. If it were Christian writing, it might contain
the name of God; even if it were the work of a pagan, it contained
the letters that make up the sacred name. When St. Francis, of the
people and singing for the people, wrote in the vernacular, he asked
Fra Pacifico, who had been a great poet in the world, to reduce his
verses to the rules of metre. "
«<
-
St. Bonaventura, Jacomino di Verona, and Jacopone di Todi, the
author of the Stabat Mater,' were Franciscans who followed in his
footsteps. "The Crusades were," to quote again, "defensive as well
as offensive. The Sultan, whom St. Francis visited and filled with
respect, was not far from Christendom. " Frederick of Sicily, with
his Saracens, menaced Assisi itself. Hideous doctrines and practices
were rife; and the thirty thousand friars who soon enrolled them-
selves in the band of Francis gained the love of the people, preached
Christianity anew, symbolized it rudely for folk that could not read,
and, as St. Francis had done, they appealed to the imagination. The
legends of St. Francis-one can find them in the 'Little Flowers,' of
which there are at least two good English translations - became the
tenderest poems of the poor.
If St. Francis had been less of a poet, he would have been less of
a saint. He died a poet, on October 4, 1225: he asked to be buried
on the Infernal Hill of Assisi, where the crusaders were laid to rest;
"and," he said, "sing my Canticle of the Sun,' so that I may add a
song in praise of my sister Death. The lines," he added, "will be
found at the end of the 'Cantico del Sole. '»
(
Paul Sabatier's 'Life of St. Francis,' and Mrs. Oliphant's, are best
known to English-speaking readers. The most exhaustive Life' is
by the Abbé Leon Le Monnier, in two volumes. It has lately been
translated into English.
manni Francis Egan
## p. 5923 (#511) ###########################################
ST. FRANCIS D'ASSISI
5923
ORDER
[Our Lord Speaks]
A
ND though I fill thy heart with hottest love,
Yet in true order must thy heart love me,
For without order can no virtue be;
By thine own virtue, then, I from above
Stand in thy soul; and so, most earnestly,
Must love from turmoil be kept wholly free:
The life of fruitful trees, the seasons of
The circling year move gently as a dove:
I measured all the things upon the earth;
Love ordered them, and order kept them fair,
And love to order must be truly wed.
O soul, why all this heat of little worth?
Why cast out order with no thought of care?
For by love's heat must love be governèd ?
Translation of Maurice Francis Egan.
THE CANTICLE OF THE SUN
[The title is Incipiunt Laudes Creaturarum quas fecit Franciscus ad Lau-
dem et Honorem Dei cum esset Infirmus ad Sanctum Damianum. ' It is
sometimes called the Canticle of the Creatures. › It is in Italian, and it
opens with these words: -"Altissimi, omnipotente, bon Signore, tue so le
laude la gloria e l'onore et omne benedictione. "]
O
MOST HIGH, Almighty, good Lord God, to thee belong praise,
glory, honor, and all blessing.
Praised be my Lord God, with all his creatures, and
specially our brother the sun, who brings us the day and who
brings us the light; fair is he, and he shines with a very great
splendor. O Lord, he signifies to us thee!
Praised be my Lord for our sister the moon, and for the stars,
the which he has set clear and lovely in heaven.
Praised be my Lord for our brother the wind, and for air and
clouds, calms and all weather, by which thou upholdest life in all
creatures.
Praised be my Lord for our sister water, who is very service-
able to us, and humble and precious and clean.
## p. 5924 (#512) ###########################################
5924
ST. FRANCIS D'ASSISI
Praised be my Lord for our brother fire, through whom thou
givest us light in the darkness; and he is bright and pleasant,
and very mighty and strong.
Praised be my Lord for our mother the earth, the which doth
sustain us and keep us, and bringest forth divers fruits, and
flowers of many colors, and grass.
Praised be my Lord for all those who pardon one another for
love's sake, and who endure weakness and tribulation; blessed are
they who peacefully shall endure, for thou, O Most High, wilt
give them a crown.
Praised be my Lord for our sister the death of the body, from
which no man escapeth. Woe to him who dieth in mortal sin.
Blessed are those who die in thy most holy will, for the second
death shall have no power to do them harm. Praise ye and bless
the Lord, and give thanks to him and serve him with great
humility.
[The last stanza, in praise of death, was added to the poem on the
day St. Francis left the world, October 4th, 1225. ]
Translation of Maurice Francis Egan.
## p. 5925 (#513) ###########################################
5925
100
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
(1706-1790)
BY JOHN BIGELOW
HE youngest of the four children of a Boston tallow-chandler
named Franklin was born a subject of Queen Anne of Eng-
land, on the 6th of January, 1706; and on the same day re-
ceived the baptismal name of Benjamin at the Old South Church in
that city. He continued for more than seventy of the eighty-four
years of his life a subject of four successive British monarchs. Dur-
ing that period, neither Anne nor either of the three Georges who
succeeded her had a subject of whom they had more reason to be
proud, nor one whom at his death their people generally supposed
they had more reason to detest. No Englishman of his generation
can now be said to have established a more enduring fame, in any
way, than Franklin established in many ways. As a printer, as a
journalist, as a diplomatist, as a statesman, as a philosopher, he was
easily first among his peers.
On the other hand, it is no disparagement of the services of any
of his contemporaries on either side of the Atlantic, to say that no
one of his generation contributed more effectually to the dissolution
of the bonds which united the principal British-American colonies to
the mother country, and towards conferring upon them independence
and a popular government.
As a practical printer Franklin was reported to have had no supe-
riors; as a journalist he exerted an influence not only unrivaled in his
day, but more potent, on this continent at least, than either of his
sovereigns or their Parliaments. The organization of police, and
later of the militia, for Philadelphia; of companies for extinguishing
fires; making the sweeping and paving of the streets a municipal
function; the formation of the first public library for Philadelphia,
and the establishment of an academy which has matured into the
now famous University of Pennsylvania, were among the conspicuous
reforms which he planted and watered in the columns of the Phila-
delphia Gazette. This journal he founded; upon the earnings of it
he mainly subsisted during a long life, and any sheet of it to-day
would bring a larger price in the open market probably than a single
sheet of any other periodical ever published.
## p. 5926 (#514) ###########################################
5926
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Franklin's Almanack, his crowning work in the sphere of jour-
nalism, published under the pseudonym of Richard Saunders, - better
known since as Poor Richard,—is still one of the marvels of modern
literature. Under one or another of many titles the contents of this
publication, exclusive of its calendars, have been translated into every
tongue having any pretensions to a literature; and have had more
readers, probably, than any other publication in the English or in-
deed in any other language, with the single exception of the Bible.
It was the first issue from an American press that found a popular
welcome in foreign lands, and it still enjoys the special distinction of
being the only almanac ever published that owed its extraordinary
popularity entirely to its literary merit.
What adds to the surprise with which we contemplate the fame
and fortunes of this unpretentious publication, is the fact that its
reputation was established by its first number, and when its author
was only twenty-six years of age. For a period of twenty-six years,
and until Franklin ceased to edit it, this annual was looked forward
to by a larger portion of the colonial population and with more
impatience than now awaits a President's annual message to Congress.
Franklin graduated from journalism into diplomacy as naturally.
as winter glides into spring. This was simply because he was by
common acclaim the fittest man for any kind of public service the
colony possessed, and especially for any duty requiring talents for
persuasion, in which he proved himself to be unquestionably past
master among the diplomatists of his time.
The question of taxing the Penn proprietary estates in Pennsyl-
vania, for the defense of the province from the French and Indians,
had assumed such an acute stage in 1757 that the Assembly decided
to petition the King upon the subject; and selected Franklin, then in
the forty-first year of his age, to visit London and present their peti-
tion. The next forty-one years of his life were practically all spent
in the diplomatic service. He was five years absent on this his first
mission. Every interest in London was against him. He finally sur-
mounted all obstacles by a compromise, which pledged the Assembly
to pass an act exempting from taxation the unsurveyed lands of the
Penn estate, the surveyed waste lands, however, to be assessed at
the usual rate. For his success the Penns and their partisans never
forgave him, and his fellow colonists never forgot him.
Franklin returned to Philadelphia in 1762, but not to remain.
The question of taxing the colonies without representation was soon
thrust upon them in the shape of a stamp duty, and Franklin was
sent out again to urge its repeal. He reached London in November
1764, where he remained the next eleven years and until it became
apparent that the surrender of the right to arbitrarily tax the
## p. 5927 (#515) ###########################################
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
5927
colonies would never be made by England during the life of the
reigning sovereign, George III. Satisfied that his usefulness in Eng-
land was at an end, he sailed for Philadelphia on the 21st of March,
1775; and on the morning of his arrival was elected by the Assembly
of Pennsylvania a delegate to the Continental Congress which con-
solidated the armies of the colonies, placed General George Washing-
ton in command of them, issued the first Continental currency, and
assumed the responsibility of resisting the imperial government; his
last hope of maintaining the integrity of the empire having been
dissipated by recent collisions between the people and the royalist
troops at Concord and Lexington. Franklin served on ten com-
mittees in this Congress. He was one of the five who drew up the
Declaration of Independence in July 1776, and in September following
was chosen unanimously as one of the three commissioners to be
sent out to solicit for the infant republic the aid of France and the
sympathies of continental Europe. In this mission, the importance
of which to his country can hardly be exaggerated, he was greatly
favored by the reputation which had preceded him as a man of
science. While yet a journalist he had made some experiments in
electricity, which established its identity with lightning. The publi-
cation by an English correspondent of the letters in which he gave
an account of these experiments, secured his election as an honorary
member of the Royal Society of London and undisputed rank among
the most eminent natural philosophers of his time. When he arrived
in Paris, therefore, he was already a member of every important
learned society in Europe, one of the managers of the Royal Society
of London, and one of the eight foreign members of the Royal Acad-
emy in Paris, where three editions of his scientific writings had
already been printed. To these advantages must be added another
of even greater weight: his errand there was to assist in dismember-
ing the British Empire, than which nothing of a political nature was
at this time much nearer every Frenchman's heart.
The history of this mission, and how Franklin succeeded in procur-
ing from the French King financial aid to the amount of twenty-six
millions of francs, at times when the very existence of the republic
depended upon them, and finally a treaty of peace more favorable to
his country than either England or France wished to concede, has
been often told; and there is no chapter in the chronicles of this
republic with which the world is more familiar.
Franklin's reputation grew with his success. "It was," wrote
his colleague John Adams, "more universal than that of Leibnitz or
Newton, Frederick the Great or Voltaire, and his character more
beloved and esteemed than all of them.
If a collection
could be made of all the gazettes of Europe for the latter half of the
·
## p. 5928 (#516) ###########################################
5928
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
eighteenth century, a greater number of panegyrical paragraphs upon
le grand Franklin would appear, it is believed, than upon any other
man that ever lived. "
A few weeks after signing the definitive treaty of peace in 1783,
Franklin renewed an application which he had previously made just
after signing the preliminary treaty, to be relieved of his mission;
but it was not until the 7th of March, 1785, that Congress adopted a
resolution permitting "the Honorable Benjamin Franklin to return
to America as soon as convenient. " Three days later, Thomas Jeffer-
son was appointed to succeed him.
On the 13th of September, 1785, and after a sojourn of nearly nine
years in the French capital, first in the capacity of commissioner and
subsequently of minister plenipotentiary, Franklin once more landed
in Philadelphia, on the same wharf on which, sixty-two years before,
he had stepped, a friendless and practically penniless runaway appren-
tice of seventeen.
Though now in his seventy-ninth year, and a prey to infirmities
not the necessary incidents of old age, he had scarcely unpacked his
trunks after his return when he was chosen a member of the munici-
pal council of Philadelphia, and its chairman. Shortly after, he was
elected president of Pennsylvania, his own vote only lacking to make
the vote unanimous. "I have not firmness," he wrote to a friend, "to
resist the unanimous desire of my countryfolks; and I find myself
harnessed again into their service another year. They engrossed the
prime of my life; they have eaten my flesh, and seem resolved now
to pick my bones. "
He was unanimously re-elected to this dignity for the two succeed-
ing years, and while holding that office was chosen a member of the
convention which met in May 1787 to frame the Constitution under
which the people of the United States are still living.
With the adoption of that instrument, to which he probably con-
tributed as much as any other individual, he retired from official life;
though not from the service of the public, to which for the remain-
ing years of his stay on earth his genius and his talents were faith-
fully consecrated.
Among the fruits of that unfamiliar leisure, always to be remem-
bered among the noblest achievements of his illustrious career, was
the part he had in organizing the first anti-slavery society in the
world; and as its president, writing and signing the first remonstrance
against slavery ever addressed to the Congress of the United States.
In surveying the life of Dr. Franklin as a whole, the thing that
most impresses one is his constant study and singleness of purpose
to promote the welfare of human society. It was his daily theme as
a journalist, and his yearly theme as an almanac-maker. It is that
## p. 5929 (#517) ###########################################
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
5929
which first occurs to us when we recall his career as a member of
the Colonial Assembly; as an agent of the provinces in England;
as a diplomatist in France; and as a member of the conventions
which crowned the consistent labors of his long life. Nor are there
any now so bold as to affirm that there was any other person who
could have been depended upon to accomplish for his country or the
world, what Franklin did in any of the several stages of his versatile
career.
Though holding office for more than half of his life, the office
always sought Franklin, not Franklin the office. When sent to Eng-
land as the agent of the colony, he withdrew from business with a
modest competence judiciously invested mostly in real estate. He
never seems to have given a thought to its increase. Frugal in his
habits, simple in his tastes, wise in his indulgences, he died with a
fortune neither too large nor too small for his fame as a citizen or a
patriot. For teaching frugality and economy to the colonists, when
frugality and economy were indispensable to the conservation of their
independence and manhood, he has been sneered at as the teacher of
a "candle-end-saving philosophy," and his 'Poor Richard' as a "col-
lection of receipts for laying up treasures on earth rather than in
heaven. " Franklin never taught, either by precept or example, to lay
up treasures on earth. He taught the virtues of industry, thrift, and
economy, as the virtues supremely important in his time, to keep
people out of debt and to provide the means of educating and digni-
fying society. He never countenanced the accumulation of wealth
for its own sake, but for its uses, -its prompt convertibility into
social comforts and refinements. It would be difficult to name
another man of any age to whom an ambition to accumulate wealth
as an end could be imputed with less propriety. Though probably
the most inventive genius of his age, and thus indirectly the founder
of many fortunes, he never asked a patent for any of his inventions
or discoveries. Though one of the best writers of the English
language that his country has yet produced, he never wrote a line
for money after he withdrew from the calling by which he made a
modest provision for his family.
For the remaining half of his life both at home and abroad,
though constantly operating upon public opinion by his pen, he
never availed himself of a copyright or received a penny from any
publisher or patron for any of these labors. In none of the public
positions which he held, even when minister plenipotentiary, did his
pay equal his expenditures. He was three years president of Penn-
sylvania after his return from France, and for his services declined to
appropriate to his own use anything beyond his necessary expendi-
tures for stationery, postage, and transportation. It is not by such.
## p. 5930 (#518) ###########################################
5930
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
methods that men justly incur the implied reproach of "laying up
treasures on earth," or of teaching a candle-end-saving philosophy.
Franklin courted fame no more than fortune. The best of his
writings, after his retirement from journalism, he never gave to the
press at all; not even his incomparable autobiography, which is still
republished more frequently than any of the writings of Dickens or
of Thackeray. He always wrote for a larger purpose than mere per-
sonal gratification of any kind. Even his bagatelles and jeux d'esprit
read in the salons of Paris, though apparently intended for the eyes
of a small circle, were inspired by a desire to make friends and
create respect for the struggling people and the great cause he rep-
resented. Few if any of them got into print until many years after
his decease.
Franklin was from his youth up a leader, a lion in whatever
circle he entered, whether in the printing-house, the provincial As-
semblies, as agent in England, or as a courtier in France. There
was no one too eminent in science or literature, on either side of
the Atlantic, not to esteem his acquaintance a privilege. He was
an honorary member of every important scientific association in the
world, and in friendly correspondence with most of those who con-
ferred upon those bodies any distinction; and all this by force of a
personal, not to say planetary, attraction that no one brought within
his sphere could long resist.
Pretty much all of importance that we know of Franklin we
gather from his private correspondence. His contemporaries wrote
or at least printed very little about him; scarcely one of the multi-
tude whose names he embalmed in his 'Autobiography' ever printed
a line about him. All that we know of the later half of his life not
covered by his autobiography, we owe almost exclusively to his pri-
vate and official correspondence.
Though reckoning among his warm
friends and correspondents such men as David Hume, Dr. Joseph
Priestley, Dr. Price, Lord Kames, Lord Chatham, Dr. Fothergill,
Peter Collinson, Edmund Burke, the Bishop of St. Asaph and his
gifted daughters, Voltaire, the habitués of the Helvétius salon, the
Marquis de Ségur, the Count de Vergennes, his near neighbors De
Chaumont and Le Veillard, the maire of Passy,- all that we learn of
his achievements, of his conversation, of his daily life, from these or
many other associates of only less prominence in the Old World,
might be written on a single foolscap sheet.
Nor are we under
much greater obligations to his American friends. It is to his own
letters (and except his 'Autobiography,' he can hardly be said to
have written anything in any other than the epistolary form; and
that was written in the form of a letter to his son William, and most
of it only began to be published a quarter of a century after his
## p. 5931 (#519) ###########################################
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
5931
death) that we must turn to learn how full of interest and importance
to mankind was this last half-century of his life. Beyond keeping
copies of his correspondence, which his official character made a duty
as well as a necessity, he appears to have taken no precautions to
insure the posthumous fame to which his correspondence during that
period was destined to contribute so much. Hence, all the biogra-
phies and they are numberless - owe almost their entire interest
and value to his own pen. All, so far as they are biographies, are
autobiographies; and for that reason it may be fairly said that all of
them are interesting.
It is also quite remarkable that though Franklin's life was a con-
tinuous warfare, he had no personal enemies. His extraordinary and
even intimate experience of every phase of human life, from the very
lowest to the very highest, had made him so tolerant that he regarded
differences of opinion and of habits much as he regarded the changes
of the weather, -as good or bad for his purposes, but which, though
he might sometimes deplore, he had no right to quarrel with or
assume personal responsibility for. Hence he never said or did things
personally offensive. The causes that he represented had enemies,
for he was all his life a reformer. All men who are good for any-
thing have such enemies. "I have, as you observe," wrote Franklin
to John Jay the year that he retired from the French mission, "some
enemies in England, but they are my enemies as an American; I
have also two or three in America who are my enemies as a minis-
ter; but I thank God there are not in the whole world any who
are my enemies as a man: for by his grace, through a long life, I
have been enabled so to conduct myself that there does not exist a
human being who can justly say, 'Ben Franklin has wronged me. '
This, my friend, is in old age a comfortable reflection. You too have
or may have your enemies; but let not that render you unhappy. If
you make a right use of them, they will do you more good than
harm. They point out to us our faults; they put us upon our guard
and help us to live more correctly. "
Franklin's place in literature as a writer has not been generally
appreciated, probably because with him writing was only a means,
never an end, and his ends always dwarfed his means, however
effective. He wrote to persuade others, never to parade his literary
skill. He never wrote a dull line, and was never nimious.
The long-
est production of his pen was his autobiography, written during the
closing years of his life. Nearly all that he wrote besides was in the
form of letters, which would hardly average three octavo pages in
length. And yet whatever the subject he touched upon, he never
left the impression of incompleteness or of inconclusiveness. Of him
may be said, perhaps with as much propriety as of any other man,
## p. 5932 (#520) ###########################################
5932
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
that he never said a word too soon, nor a word too late, nor a word
too much. Tons of paper have been devoted to dissuasives from duel-
ing, but the argument was never put more effectively than Frank-
lin put it in these dozen lines of a letter to a Mr. Percival, who had
sent him a volume of literary and moral dissertations.
"A gentleman in a coffee-house desired another to sit further from him.
(Why so? Because you stink. )-(That is an affront, and you must fight
me. ' 'I will fight you if you insist upon it, but I do not see how that will
mend the matter. For if you kill me, I shall stink too; and if I kill you, you
will stink, if possible, worse than at present. How can such miserable sin-
ners as we are, entertain so much pride as to conceit that every offense
against our imagined honor merits death? These petty princes, in their opin-
ion, would call that sovereign a tyrant who should put one of them to death
for a little uncivil language, though pointed at his sacred person; yet every
one of them makes himself judge in his own cause, condemns the offender
without a jury, and undertakes himself to be the executioner. »
Some one wrote him that the people in England were abusing the
Americans and speaking all manner of evil against them. Franklin
replied that this was natural enough:
"They impute to us the evil they wished us. They are angry with us, and
speak all manner of evil of us; but we flourish notwithstanding. They put
me in mind of a violent High Church factor, resident in Boston when I was a
boy. He had bought upon speculation a Connecticut cargo of onions which he
flattered himself he might sell again to great profit; but the price fell, and
they lay upon his hands. He was heartily vexed with his bargain, especially
when he observed they began to grow in his store he had filled with them.
He showed them one day to a friend. Here they are,' said he, 'and they are
growing too. I damn them every day, but I think they are like the Presby-
terians; the more I curse them, the more they grow. >»
Mr. Jefferson tells us that Franklin was sitting by his side in the
convention while the delegates were picking his famous declaration
of Independence to pieces, and seeing how Jefferson was squirming
under their mutilations, comforted him with the following stories, the
rare excellence of which has given them a currency which has long
since worn off their novelty: -
"I have made it a rule,' said he, whenever in my power, to avoid
becoming the draftsman of papers to be reviewed by a public body. I took
my lesson from an incident which I will relate to you.
<<<When I was a journeyman printer, one of my companions, an appren
ticed hatter, having served out his time, was about to open shop for himself.
His first concern was to have a handsome sign-board with the proper inscrip-
tion. He composed it in these words: John Thompson, Hatter, makes and
sells Hats for ready Money, with a figure of a hat subjoined. But he thought
he would submit it to his friends for their amendments. The first he showed
## p. 5933 (#521) ###########################################
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
5933
it to thought the word hatter tautologous, because followed by the words
makes hats, which showed he was a hatter. It was struck out. The next
observed that the word makes might as well be omitted, because his customers
would not care who made the hats; if good and to their mind, they would buy,
by whomsoever made. He struck it out. A third said he thought the words
for ready money were useless, as it was not the custom of the place to sell on
credit: every one who purchased expected to pay. They were parted with,
and the inscription now stood, John Thompson sells hats.
«Sells hats," says
his next friend; "why, nobody will expect you to give them away. What
then is the use of that word? " It was stricken out, and hats followed, the
rather as there was one painted on the board. So his inscription was ulti-
mately reduced to John Thompson, with the figure of a hat subjoined. »»
When the members were about to sign the document, Mr. Han-
cock is reported to have said, "We must be unanimous; there must
be no pulling different ways; we must all hang together. " "Yes,"
replied Franklin, "we must indeed all hang together, or most assur-
edly we shall all hang separately. "
The Doric simplicity of his style; his incomparable facility of con-
densing a great principle into an apologue or an anecdote, many of
which, as he applied them, have become the folk-lore of all nations;
his habitual moderation of statement, his aversion to exaggeration,
his inflexible logic, and his perfect truthfulness,- made him one of
the most persuasive men of his time, and his writings a model which
no one can study without profit. A judicious selection from Frank-
lin's writings should constitute a part of the curriculum of every
college and high school that aspires to cultivate in its pupils a pure
style and correct literary taste.
There was one incident in Franklin's life, which, though more fre-
quently referred to in terms of reproach than any other, will probably
count for more in his favor in the Great Assize than any other of
his whole life. While yet in his teens he became a father before he
was a husband. He never did what men of the loftiest moral pre-
tensions not unfrequently do, shirk as far as possible any personal
responsibility for this indiscretion. On the contrary, he took the
fruit of it to his home; gave him the best education the schools of
the country then afforded. When he went abroad, this son accom-
panied him, was presented as his son wherever he went, was pre-
sented in all the great houses in which he himself was received; he
entered him at the Inns of Court, and in due time had him admitted
to the English bar; made him his private secretary, and at an early
age caused him to be appointed by the Crown, Governor of New
Jersey. The father not only did everything to repair the wrong he
had done his son, but at a time when he was at the zenith of his
fame and official importance, publicly proclaimed it as one of the
## p. 5934 (#522) ###########################################
5934
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
great errors of his life. The world has always abounded with bas-
tards; but with the exception of crowned heads claiming to hold.
their sceptres by Divine right, and therefore beyond the reach of
popular criticism or reproach, it would be difficult to name another
parent of his generation of anything like corresponding eminence
with Franklin, who had the courage and the magnanimity to expiate
such a wrong to his offspring so fully and effectively.
Franklin was not a member of the visible Church, nor did he
ever become the adherent of any sect. He was three years younger
than Jonathan Edwards, and in his youth heard his share of the then
prevailing theology of New England, of which Edwards was regarded,
and perhaps justly, as the most eminent exponent. The extremes to
which Edwards carried those doctrines at last so shocked the people
of Massachusetts that he was rather ignominiously expelled from his
pulpit at Northampton; and the people of Massachusetts, in very con-
siderable proportions, gradually wandered over into the Unitarian
communion. To Jonathan Edwards and the inflexible law of action
and reaction, more than to Priestley or any one else of their genera-
tion, that sect owes to this day its numerical strength, its influence,
and its dignity, in New England. With the creed of that sect Dr.
Franklin had more in common than with any other, though he was
much too wise a man to suppose that there was but one gate of
admission to the Holy City. He believed in one God; that Jesus was
the best man that ever lived, and his example the most profitable
one ever given us to follow. He never succeeded in accepting the
doctrine that Jehovah and Jesus were one person, or that miracles
attributed to the latter in the Bible were ever worked. He thought
the best service and sufficient worship of God was in doing all the
goo ve can to his creatures. He therefore never occupied himself
much with ecclesiastical ceremonies, sectarian differences, or theologi-
cal subtleties. A reverend candidate for episcopal orders wrote to
Franklin, complaining that the Archbishop of Canterbury had refused
to ordain him unless he would take the oath of allegiance, which he
was too patriotic a Yankee to do. Franklin, in reply, asked what
necessity there was for his being connected with the Church of Eng-
land; if it would not be as well were it the Church of Ireland. Per-
haps were he to apply to the Bishop of Derry, who was a man of
liberal sentiments, he might give him orders, as of that Church.
Should both England and Ireland refuse, Franklin assumed that the
Bishops of Sweden and Norway would refuse also, unless the candi-
dates embraced Lutheranism. He then added:-
"Next to becoming Presbyterians, the Episcopalian clergy of America, in
my humble opinion, cannot do better than to follow the example of the first
clergy of Scotland, soon after the conversion of that country to Christianity.
## p. 5935 (#523) ###########################################
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
5935
When the King had built the cathedral of St. Andrew's, and requested the
King of Northumberland to lend his bishops to ordain one for them, that their
clergy might not as heretofore be obliged to go to Northumberland for orders,
and their request was refused, they assembled in the cathedral, and the
mitre, crosier, and robes of a bishop being laid upon the altar, they after
earnest prayers for direction in their choice elected one of their own number;
when the King said to him, "Arise, go to the altar, and receive your office
at the hand of God. " His brethren led him to the altar, robed him, put the
crosier in his hand and the mitre on his head, and he became the first
Bishop of Scotland.
"If the British islands were sunk in the sea (and the surface of this globe
has suffered great changes), you would probably take some such method as
this; and if they persist in denying your ordination, it is the same thing. A
hundred years hence, when people are more enlightened, it will be wondered
at that men in America, qualified by their learning and piety to pray for and
instruct their neighbors, should not be permitted to do it till they had made
a voyage of six thousand miles out and home, to ask leave of a cross old
gentleman at Canterbury. »
Franklin, however, was in no sense an agnostic. What he could
not understand he did not profess to understand or believe; neither
was he guilty of the presumption of holding that what he could not
understand, he might not have understood if he had been a wiser and
better man. Though impatient of cant and hypocrisy, especially in
the pulpit, he never spoke lightly of the Bible, or of the Church and
its offices. When his daughter Sally was about to marry, he wrote
to her: :-
"My dear child, the natural prudence and goodness of heart God has blest
you with, make it less necessary for me to be particular in giving you ad-
vice. I shall therefore only say, that the more attentively dutiful and tender
you are towards your good mamma, the more you will recommend yourself
to me. But why should I mention me, when you have so much higher a
promise in the Commandments, that such conduct will recommend you to the
favor of God? You know I have many enemies, all indeed on the public
account (for I cannot recollect that I have in a private capacity given just
cause of offense to any one whatever): yet they are enemies, and very bitter
ones; and you must expect their enmity will extend in some degree to you,
so that your slightest indiscretions will be magnified into crimes, in order the
more sensibly to wound and afflict me. It is therefore the more necessary for
you to be extremely circumspect in all your behavior, that no advantage may
be given to their malevolence.
"Go constantly to church, whoever preaches. The act of devotion in the
Common Prayer Book is your principal business there, and if properly at-
tended to will do more towards amending the heart than sermons generally
can do. For they were composed by men of much greater piety and wisdom
than our common composers of sermons can pretend to be; and therefore I
wish you would never miss the prayer days: yet I do not mean you should
## p. 5936 (#524) ###########################################
5936
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
despise sermons, even of the preachers you dislike, for the discourse is often
much better than the man, as sweet and clear waters come through very dirty
earth. I am the more particular on this head, as you seemed to express a
little before I came away some inclination to leave our church, which I would
not have you do. "
I cannot more fitly close this imperfect sketch of America's most
illustrious citizen, than by quoting from a touching and most affec-
tionate letter from Mrs. Hewson (Margaret Stevenson),- one of Frank-
lin's worthiest, most faithful, and most valued friends,- addressed to
one of Franklin's oldest friends in England.
"We have lost that valued, venerable, kind friend whose knowledge en-
lightened our minds and whose philanthropy warmed our hearts. But we have
the consolation to think that if a life well spent in acts of universal benevo-
lence to mankind, a grateful acknowledgment of Divine favor, a patient sub-
mission under severe chastisement, and an humble trust in Almighty mercy,
can insure the happiness of a future state, our present loss is his gain. I was
the faithful witness of the closing scene, which he sustained with that calm
fortitude which characterized him through life. No repining, no peevish ex-
pression ever escaped him during a confinement of two years, in which, I
believe, if every moment of ease could be added together, would not amount
to two whole months. When the pain was not too violent to be amused, he
employed himself with his books, his pen, or in conversation with his friends;
and upon every occasion displayed the clearness of his intellect and the cheer-
fulness of his temper. Even when the intervals from pain were so short that
his words were frequently interrupted, I have known him to hold a discourse
in a sublime strain of piety. I say this to you because I know it will give
you pleasure.
"I never shall forget one day that I passed with our friend last summer.
I found him in bed in great agony; but when that agony abated a little I
asked if I should read to him. He said yes; and the first book I met with
was Johnson's 'Lives of the Poets. I read the Life of Watts,' who was a
favorite author with Dr. Franklin; and instead of lulling him to sleep, it
roused him to a display of the powers of his memory and his reason. He
repeated several of Watts's Lyric Poems, and descanted upon their sub-
limity in a strain worthy of them and of their pious author. It is natural for
us to wish that an attention to some ceremonies had accompanied that religion
of the heart which I am convinced Dr. Franklin always possessed; but let us
who feel the benefit of them continue to practice them, without thinking
lightly of that piety which could support pain without a murmur, and meet
death without terror. »
Franklin made a somewhat more definite statement of his views
on the subject of religion, in reply to an inquiry from President
Styles of Yale College, who expressed a desire to know his opinion
of Jesus of Nazareth. Franklin's reply was written the last year of
his life, and in the eighty-fourth of his age: -
## p. 5937 (#525) ###########################################
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
5937
"You desire to know something of my religion. It is the first time I have
been questioned upon it. But I cannot take your curiosity amiss, and shall
endeavor in a few words to gratify it. Here is my creed. I believe in one
God, the creator of the universe. That he governs it by his Providence. That
he ought to be worshiped. That the most acceptable service we render to
him is doing good to his other children. That the soul of man is immortal,
and will be treated with justice in another life respecting its conduct in this.
These I take to be the fundamental points in all sound religion, and I regard
them as you do in whatever sect I meet with them.
"As to Jesus of Nazareth, my opinion of whom you particularly desire,
I think his system of morals and his religion, as he left them to us, the best
the world ever saw or is like to see; but I apprehend it has received various
corrupting changes, and I have, with most of the present Dissenters in Eng-
land, some doubts as to his Divinity; though it is a question I do not dogma-
tize upon, having never studied it, and think it needless to busy myself with
it now, when I expect soon an opportunity of knowing the truth with less
trouble. I see no harm, however, in its being believed, if that belief has the
good consequence, as probably it has, of making his doctrines more respected
and more observed; especially as I do not perceive that the Supreme takes it
amiss, by distinguishing the unbelievers in his government of the world with
any peculiar marks of his displeasure.
"I shall only add, respecting myself, that, having experienced the goodness
of that Being in conducting me prosperously through a long life, I have no
doubt of its continuance in the next, though without the smallest conceit of
meriting such goodness. My sentiments on this head you will see in the copy
of an old letter inclosed, which I wrote in answer to one from an old religion-
ist whom I had relieved in a paralytic case by electricity, and who, being
afraid I should grow proud upon it, sent me his serious though rather imper-
tinent caution. »
W Bigston
евт
OF FRANKLIN'S FAMILY AND EARLY LIFE
From the Autobiography,' in Bigelow's Edition of Franklin's Works
J
OSIAH, my father, married young, and carried his wife with
three children into New England about 1682. The conven-
ticles having been forbidden by law and frequently dis-
turbed, induced some considerable men of his acquaintance to
remove to that country, and he was prevailed with to accompany
them thither, where they expected to enjoy their mode of reli-
gion with freedom. By the same wife he had four children more
X-372
## p. 5938 (#526) ###########################################
5938
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
born there, and by a second wife ten more, in all seventeen; of
which I remember thirteen sitting at one time at his table, who
all grew up to be men and women, and married. I was the
youngest son and the youngest child but two, and was born in
Boston, New England. My mother, the second wife, was Abiah
Folger, daughter of Peter Folger, one of the first settlers of New
England, of whom honorable mention is made by Cotton Mather
in his church history of that country, entitled 'Magnalia Christi
Americana,' as "a goodly, learned Englishman," if I remember
the words rightly. I have heard that he wrote sundry small
occasional pieces, but only one of them was printed, which I saw
now many years since.
My elder brothers were all put apprentices to different trades.
I was put to the grammar school at eight years of age, my
father intending to devote me, as the tithe of his sons, to the
service of the Church. My early readiness in learning to read
(which must have been very early, as I do not remember when
I could not read), and the opinion of all his friends that I should
certainly make a good scholar, encouraged him in this purpose
of his. My uncle Benjamin too approved of it, and proposed
to give me all his short-hand volumes of sermons,- I
suppose
as a stock to set up with,-if I would learn his character. I
continued, however, at the grammar school not quite one year,
though in that time I had risen gradually from the middle of
the class of that year to be the head of it, and farther was re-
moved into the next class above it, in order to go with that into
the third at the end of the year. But my father in the mean
time, from a view of the expense of a college education, which
having so large a family he could not well afford, and the mean
living many so educated were afterwards able to obtain,― reasons
that he gave to his friends in my hearing,- altered his first
intention, took me from the grammar school, and sent me to a
school for writing and arithmetic, kept by a then famous man,
Mr. George Brownell, very successful in his profession generally,
and that by mild, encouraging methods. Under him I acquired
fair writing pretty soon, but I failed in the arithmetic, and made
no progress in it. At ten years old I was taken home to assist
my father in his business, which was that of a tallow-chandler
and soap-boiler,-a business he was not bred to, but had as-
sumed on his arrival in New England, and on finding his dyeing
trade would not maintain his family, being in little request.
--
## p. 5939 (#527) ###########################################
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
5939
Accordingly I was employed in cutting wick for the candles,
filling the dipping-mold and the molds for cast candles, attending
the shop, going of errands, etc.
I disliked the trade, and had a strong inclination for the sea,
but my father declared against it: however, living near the
water, I was much in and about it, learnt early to swim well
and to manage boats; and when in a boat or canoe with other
boys I was commonly allowed to govern, especially in any case
of difficulty; and upon other occasions I was generally a leader
among the boys, and sometimes led them into scrapes, of which
I will mention one instance, as it shows an early projecting pub-
lic spirit, though not then justly conducted.
There was a salt-marsh that bounded part of the mill-pond,
on the edge of which, at high water, we used to stand to fish
for minnows. By much trampling we had made it a mere quag-
mire. My proposal was to build a wharf there, fit for us to stand.
upon; and I showed my comrades a large heap of stones which
were intended for a new house near the marsh, and which would
very well suit our purpose. Accordingly, in the evening, when
the workmen were gone, I assembled a number of my playfel-
lows, and working with them diligently like so many emmets,
sometimes two or three to a stone, we brought them all away
and built our little wharf. The next morning the workmen
were surprised at missing the stones, which were found in our
wharf. Inquiry was made after the removers; we were discov-
ered and complained of; several of us were corrected by our
fathers, and though I pleaded the usefulness of the work, mine
convinced me that nothing was useful which was not honest.
I continued thus employed in my father's business for two
years, that is, till I was twelve years old; and my brother John,
who was bred to that business, having left my father, mar-
ried, and set up for himself at Rhode Island, there was all
appearance that I was destined to supply his place and become
a tallow-chandler. But my dislike to the trade continuing, my
father was under apprehensions that if he did not find one for
me more agreeable, I should break away and get to sea, as his
son Josiah had done, to his great vexation. He therefore some-
times took me to walk with him, and see joiners, bricklayers,
turners, braziers, etc. , at their work, that he might observe my
inclination, and endeavor to fix it on some trade or other on land.
It has ever since been a pleasure to me to see good workmen
## p. 5940 (#528) ###########################################
5940
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
handle their tools; and it has been useful to me, having learnt
so much by it as to be able to do little jobs myself in my house
when a workman could not readily be got, and to construct little
machines for my experiments, while the intention of making the
experiment was fresh and warm in my mind. My father at
last fixed upon the cutler's trade, and my uncle Benjamin's son
Samuel, who was bred to that business in London, being about
that time established in Boston, I was sent to be with him some
time on liking. But his expectations of a fee with me displeas-
ing my father, I was taken home again.
From a child I was fond of reading, and all the little money
that came into my hands was ever laid out in books. Pleased
with the Pilgrim's Progress,' my first collection was of John
Bunyan's works in separate little volumes. I afterward sold them
to enable me to buy R. Burton's Historical Collections'; they
were small chapmen's books, and cheap, 40 or 50 in all. My
father's little library consisted chiefly of books in polemic divin-
ity, most of which I read, and have since often regretted that at
a time when I had such a thirst for knowledge, more proper
books had not fallen in my way, since it was now resolved I
should not be a clergyman. Plutarch's Lives there was, in which
I read abundantly, and I still think that time spent to great ad-
vantage. There was also a book of De Foe's, called 'An Essay
on Projects,' and another of Dr. Mather's, called 'Essays To Do
Good,' which perhaps gave me a turn of thinking that had an
influence on some of the principal future events of my life.
This bookish inclination at length determined my father to
make me a printer, though he had already one son (James) of
that profession. In 1717 my brother James returned from Eng-
land with a press and letters, to set up his business in Boston.
I liked it much better than that of my father, but still had a
hankering for the sea. To prevent the apprehended effect of
such an inclination, my father was impatient to have me bound
to my brother. I stood out some time, but at last was per-
suaded, and signed the indentures when I was yet but twelve
years old.
I was to serve as an apprentice till I was twenty-one
years of age, only I was to be allowed journeyman's wages dur-
ing the last year. In a little time I made great proficiency in
the business, and became a useful hand to my brother.
I now
had access to better books. An acquaintance with the appren-
tices of booksellers enabled me sometimes to borrow a small
## p. 5941 (#529) ###########################################
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
5941
one, which I was careful to return soon and clean. Often I sat
up in my room reading the greatest part of the night, when the
book was borrowed in the evening and to be returned early in
the morning, lest it should be missed or wanted.
FRANKLIN'S JOURNEY TO PHILADELPHIA: HIS ARRIVAL
THERE
From the Autobiography,' in Bigelow's Edition of Franklin's Works
(
I
PROCEEDED on my journey on foot, having fifty miles to Bur-
lington, where I was told I should find boats that would carry
me the rest of the way to Philadelphia.
