withstanding his rebellion against me; and couldst not thou, that art thyself a sinner, bear with him one night?

12. And Abraham said, Let not the anger of the Lord wax hot against his servant; lo, I have sinned; forgive me, I pray thee.

13. And Abraham arose, and went forth into the wilderness, and sought diligently for the man, and found him, and returned with him to the tent; and when he had entreated him kindly, he sent him on the morrow with gifts.

away

14. And God spake unto Abraham, saying, For this thy sin, shall thy seed be afflicted four hundred years in a strange land:

15 But for thy repentance will I deliver them; and they shall come forth with power, and with gladness of heart, and with much substance.

Having supplied several unequivocal testimonies of the high respect entertained for the character and talents of Franklin by distinguished contemporaries, we cannot possibly conclude more consistently than with a brief attempt to convey a few of the general impressions which a calm consideration of his history may reasonably produce, at a period when the judg ment is less liable to be warped by friendly partiality on the one side, or political and party animosity on the other.

The first thing that will occur to every reader, in a perusal of the life of Dr Franklin, is the early hold which the principle of utility gained over his mind, so as to almost exclusively sway the whole of his conduct, both in reference to himself, and society at large. For the attainment of superiority in the grand line of practical duty, no man, either by capacity or temperance, could be better gifted than this self-formed philosopher. To a habit of the closest observation, he joined the keenest sagacity; and to these positive advantages united that equally important negative

one of almost absolute self-control; without which, in his original line of life, the strongest natural powers will seldom find opportunities to acquire social and intellectual distinction. Hence, by the humble and respectable class, of which he once formed a part, the progress from obscurity to eminence of this extraordinary man may be studied with peculiar benefit. Similar prudence, to be sure, by no means implies similar capacity, but were the prudence more general, in how much greater a degree might the latent ability of certain classes be called into activity. In thus observing however, it is not meant to. contend, that prudent, acute, and serviceable as are the majority of the frugal and economical maxims of Franklin, instances may not be selected both in his theory and practice, tending to create a suspicion that he allowed too little scope for the play of the social sympathies. We remark in his own memoirs, the concern which the loss of a little loan of money to a less fortunate fellow-adventurer seemed to inspire in him; nor are we quite satisfied that he acted with much generosity to his poorer relations, of whom in his prosperity we hear little or nothing*. On the

* Although in the service of his country, he occupied his best and ripest powers with unwearied diligence and unimpeachable disinterestedness, the details of his private life leave some remarkable deficiences. We read of his father and mother, and of their thirteen children in the early part of his life, but hear little of his intercourse with brothers or sisters after his attainment of wealth and influence. Of his own family we learn still less, either from him or his various biographers, who are even silent as to the number of his children. His only son seems to have gone early into the army, a destination which we should have little imagined his father to seek for him. He is afterwards appointed, apparently by Dr Franklin's influence, to the government of New Jersey, and remains there necessarily promoting measures in direct opposition to his father's, during the whole of the American war. All Dr Franklin thinks it necessary to state about this, is, that he took no pains to bias his son's opinions, or to induce him to swerve from what he considered his duty at this juncture. "I only wish yon to act uprightly and steadily,” said he, "avoiding that duplicity which in Hutchinson adds contempt to indignation. You are a thorough government man which I do not wonder at, nor do I aim at converting you." No one has a right to request another to act against his own principles, but it must be confessed that in this instance the forbearance is carried to an extreme, as it appears that Governor Franklin raised and commanded a corps of loyalists at New Jersey, while his father was in Paris soliciting French cannon, to drive the English and all who supported them from that part of the world. It is proper however to observe, that after the peace of 1783, Dr Franklin touchingly complains to his son of his havingtaken up arms against him in a cause wherein his good fame,

other hand his benevolence upon his own principle of general utility, was active and unremitting, and both as a patriot and philanthropist, he may vie with some of the most exalted names in either ancient or modern history. These are claims which must not bow the head to mere sentiment, and a more kindling temperament in regard to the sufferings of individuals. Not to mention how natural it is for the rigidly prudent to feel little for those who are otherwise, it is unreasonable to expect from the Catos of society the gentler virtues which belong to a totally opposite species of mental constitution.

In respect to intellectual character, we have already observed, that keen sagacity, and minute, and almost microscopic observation, formed the leading features of that of Franklin. This judgment will, we think, be borne out, whether we attend to his conduct as a 'politician, a man of science, a citizen, a tradesman, or a moral and practical philosopher. The very same attentive observation and wary discrimination, which from a hungry boy, with scarcely a shilling in his pocket, made him a leading tradesman in Philadelphia, was displayed by him in all his other capacities. It is to his praise, that in the exercise of gifts so frequently conductive to selfishness and duplicity, he seldom appears to have misused them; and if, in our admiration of the more manly and straightforward qualities, we may sometimes feel rebuffed by formal maxims for the adroit management of other people, the essence of which is dissimulation and disguise, we must ask ourselves how often they allow themselves to be governed otherwise. Thus much upon the conduct of Dr Franklin as the influential member of a community; as an employed and active politician it is unnecessary to say that the difficulty is still greater. In the calm regions of pure science, his leading quali

fortune, and life were at stake, and properly asserts that there are natural ties which even supersede political ones. To complete the confusion of moral and political duties in this family, the son of the loyalist Governor was actively employed with his grandfather at Paris, in opposition to the cause espoused by his own father,—all which is certainly anomalous and strange.

ties were however useful without alloy, and in reference both to his scientific discoveries, and his literary efforts, they appear to great advantage. As a philosopher, and a philosophical friend, indeed, he shone with unqualified lustre. We have seen his efforts for the protection of science, during the horrors of war; and throughout the same stormy period, he kept up his intercourse with his friends in England, neither committing them with his political measures, nor involving them in his indignation at their country. His friendship with Mr Hartley, and the general kindness of his character were, as we have seen, the great means of restoring peace to a warring world. Whether we are to regard as slightly disingenuous his concealment of his occasional obligation to obsolete sources, as in his discovery of the effect of oil upon the waves, which he is suspected of having borrowed from a narration by the venerable Bede, and his Oriental Apologue, most certainly modified from the sketch of Jeremy Taylor as already related, we leave to stricter casuists to determine. If even so, the offence if confined to these instances, is by no means of an unpardonable kind.

Much discountenance of the just claims of Dr Franklin has been produced by the latitude of his opinions in regard to religion. The truth seems to be, that he tried creeds upon the same close principle of utility with which he tried everything else; and this is a test which doctrines and mysteries, are neither intended nor formed to encounter. To minds constructed like that of Franklin, mystery in fact is utterly repugnant, and scepticism is their refuge in respect to opinion; while on the score of utility, some mongrel system is adopted which promises to afford the necessary sanction to sound morality, which is or ought to be bestowed by religion. Franklin seems to have virtually acted upon something of the principle which has latterly been warmly adopted by an increasing sect of philosophers in France; that a religious sentiment is inherent in man, and so that it be suffi

ciently developed to be restrictive upon vice, the form of worship and system of belief in which it displays itself is of the slightest possible consequence. Much may be and is said both for and against this theory. A specimen on each side may be furnished by the single observation, that it may have a tendency to impede the progress of civilization, as furthered by proselytism, while it otherwise operates to the diffusion of mutual tolerance and good will.

In concluding upon the character of Benjamin Franklin, it would be as unjust to shut our eyes to its grand aggregate value, as it would be trite and unphilosophic in an analysis of its component parts, to disregard the little shadows by which, in common with all human superiority, it is occasionally obscured; nor was he merely a great man in the abstract, but like George Washington, precisely such a great man as his country wanted. More dazzling qualities, in either, might have effected too little or too much; while the calm and steady prudence with which they kept pace with events, and made the best of circumstances, led to results as satisfactory as they were grand and surprising. In any country Franklin would have distinguished himself, and proved serviceable; but in America he was an active and congenial spirit, born for the times in which he lived, and for the illimitable advancement of his native land. It is with ineffable contempt we now read of the disregard shewn to the opinions and counsels of this eminent person, by the puny statesmen and courtiers who lost the colonies; and it is with similar sentiments all such shallow praters should be regarded, who still affect to suppose that real greatness cannot spring up out of the railways of accredited birth and peculiar education. Even the French revolution put a mark of reprobation upon this senseless arrogance; but that of America affords a loftier testimony, and no single individual acted more effectively, and at the same time more uprightly in the furtherance of that grand event, than he whose history we are now concluding.