He practiced this precept. The translations of the American Constitutions served, "the cause of all mankind," and everybody knows how Franklin was ever mindful of his friends and his family whenever he could serve them, either in private or public life; any of his relatives who were capable of filling office usually filled one. His life is full of applications of his system of prizes and rewards laid down in his scheme for an English school. If he would give gilt books to children, he would give to those who served their country the reward of public recognition. Thomas Wren was a dissenting clergyman at Portsmouth, England, who sympathizing with the American cause and pitying the distress of the American prisoners, devoted much of his time to the relief of the Americans in Forton jail. He gave of his own small fortune, he obtained the assistance of his friends, he bought clothing and medicine and food, and in every way in his power contributed to the comfort of those unhappy men. Dr. Franklin was in correspondence with him throughout the war and as a slight proof of his sense of the indebtedness of the public to Wren, Franklin was instrumental in securing him a vote of thanks from Congress in 1783 and the degree of Doctor of Divinity from Princeton College.

Illustrations abound in Franklin's life of his constant practice of the principles laid down in his scheme for the eduction of youth. Utilitarianism has its machinery of compensation and Franklin ever worked this machinery with success. His scheme of education made no provision for the useless man, and on several occasions he makes an ancient college, as in the case of Princeton, the means of rewarding a useful act. He seems to have discovered a usefulness in the granting of college degrees which at that time was so shamefully abused.

It is in 1778, while in his seventy-second year, when Franklin and John Adams are associated in diplomatic work in Paris, that the difference in their educational equipment is so apparent. Adams was a lawyer, regular in all his habits, clear in interpreting his own course in affairs, and one of the great company of human beings who worship order. The first point of difference between Franklin and Adams was relating to order. Of this Franklin had little and Adams had much. Everybody recalls Franklin's exquisite confession of his own failure to acquire orderly babits in his autobiography. It occurs in his account of his effort to apply his Art of Virtue. One of the virtues at which he aimed was order.

I made so little progress in amendment [he says] and had such frequent relapses that I was almost ready to give up the attempt, and content myself with a faulty character in that respect, like the man, who, in buying an ax of a smith, my neighbor, desired to have the whole of the surface as bright as the edge. The smith consented to grind it bright for him if he would turn the wheel; he turned while the smith pressed the broad face of the ax hard and heavily on the stone which made the turning of it very fatiguing. The man came every now and then from the wheel to see how the work went on and at length would take his ax as it was, without farther grinding. "No," said the smith, "turn on, turn on; we shall have it bright by and

by; as yet it is only speckled." "Yes," says the man, "but I think I like a speckled ax best." And I believe this may have been the case with many who, having for want of some such means as I employed, found the difficulty of obtaining good and breaking bad habits in other points of vice and virtue, have given up the struggle, and concluded "that a speckled ax was best;" for something, that pretended to be reason, was every now and then suggesting to me that such extreme nicety as I exacted of myself might be a kind of foppery in morals, which, if it were known, would make me ridiculous; that a perfect character might be attended with the inconvenience of being envied and hated, and that a benevolent man should allow a few faults in himself to keep his friends in countenance. In truth I found myself incorrigible with respect to order; and now I am grown older and my memory bad, I feel very sensibly the want of it.

Had Franklin had a keener appetite for order he might possibly have collected his various writings, or he might have completed his autobiography, or he might have arranged more perfectly the details of many of his experiments, or he might have set forth somewhere the means by which he arrived at so many of his opinions. Though Franklin is always taking us into his confidence, there are many interesting matters about him on which we would like further information. Franklin, like Daniel Webster, was capable of taking his ease. His large soul had need to be stirred now and then by lesser men. He would never have undertaken his autobiography, that priceless fragment of literature, had it not been pressed upon him by his friends.

That Franklin was estimated a hundred years ago very much as he is estimated to-day is evident from a letter to him by Benjamin Vaughan, dated Paris, January 31, 1783, in which Franklin is urged to continue his autobiography and to write his "Art of Virtue."

Your history is so remarkable that if you do not give it somebody else will certainly give it, and perhaps so as nearly to do as much harm as your own management of the thing might do good.

It will moreover present a table of internal circumstances of your country which will very much tend to invite to it settlers of virtuous and manly minds. And considering the eagerness with which such information is sought by them, and the extent of your reputation, I do not know of a more efficacious advertisement than your biography would give.

All that has happened to you is also connected with the detail of the manner and situation of a rising people; and in this respect I do not think that the writings of Cæsar and Tacitus can be more interesting to a judge of human nature and society. But these, sir, are small reasons, in my opinion, compared with the chance which your life will give for the forming of future great men, and in conjunction with your "Art of Virtue" (which you design to publish) of improving the features of private character, and consequently of aiding all happiness, both public and domestic. The two works I allude to, sir, will in particular give a noble rule and example of self-education. School and other education constantly proceed upon false principles, and show a clumsy apparatus pointed at a false mark; but your apparatus is simple and the mark a true one; and while parents and young persons are left destitute of other just means of estimating and becoming prepared for a reasonable course in life, your discovery that the thing is in many a man's private power will be invaluable. Influence upon the private character late in life is not only an influence late in life, but a weak influeuce. It is in youth that we plant our chief habits and prejudices; it is in youth that we take our parties as to profession, pursuits, and matri

mony. In youth therefore the turn is given; in youth the education even of the next generation is given; in youth the private and public character is determined, and the term of life extending out from youth to age, life ought to begin well from youth, and more especially before we take our party as to our principal objects.

But your biography will not merely teach self-education, but the education of a wise man; and the wisest man will receive lights and improve his progress by seeing detailed the conduct of another wise man. And why are weaker men to be deprived of such helps when we see our race has been blundering on in the dark, almost without a guide in this particular, from the farthest trace of time. Show, then, sir, how much is to be done, both to the sons and fathers, and invite all wise men to become like yourself, and other men to become wise.

When we see how cruel statesmen and warriors can be to the human race, how absurd distinguished men can be to their acquaintances, it will be instructive to observe the instances multiply of pacific, acquiescing manners; and to find how compatible it is to be great and domestic, enviable and yet good-humored. The little private incidents which you will also have to relate will have considerable use, as we want above all things rules of prudence in ordinary affairs; and it will be curious to see how you have acted in these. It will be so far a sort of a key to life, and explain many things that all men ought to have once explained to them, to give them a chance of becoming wise by foresight.

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The nearest thing to having experience of one's own is to have other people's affairs brought before us in a shape that is interesting. This is sure to happen from your pen. Your affairs and management will have an air of simplicity or importance that will not fail to strike; and I am convinced you have conducted them with as much originality as if you had been conducting decisions in politics or philosophy; and what more worthy of experiments and system (its importance and its errors considered) than human life.

Some men have been virtuous blindly, others have speculated fantastically, and others have been shrewd to bad purposes; but you, sir, I am sure, will give under your hand nothing but what is at the same moment wise, practical, and good.

Your account of yourself, for I suppose the parallel I am drawing for Dr. Franklin will hold not only in point of character, but of private history, will show that you are ashamed of no origin, a thing the more important as you prove how little necessary all origin is to happiness, virtue, or greatness.

As no end likewise happens without a means, so we shall find, sir, that even you yourself framed a plan by which you became considerable; but at the same time we may see that though the event is flattering, the means are as simple as wisdom could make them; that is, depending upon nature, virtue, thought, and habit.

Another thing demonstrated will be the propriety of every man's waiting for his time for appearing upon the stage of the world. Our sensations being very much fixed to the moment, we are apt to forget that more moments are to follow the first, and consequently that man should arrange his conduct so as to suit the whole of a life. Your attribution appears to have been applied to your life, and the passing moments of it have been enlivened with content and enjoyment, instead of being tormented with foolish impatience or regrets. Such a conduct is easy for those who make virtue and themselves their standard, and who try to keep themselves in countenance by examples of other truly great men, of whom patience is so often the characteristic.

Your Quaker correspondent praised your frugality, diligence, and temperance, which he considered as a pattern for all youth; but it is singular that he should have forgotten your modesty and your disinterestedness, without which you never could have waited for your advancement or found your situation in the meantime comfortable, which is a strong lesson to show the poverty of glory and the importance of regulating our minds. If this correspondent had known the nature of your reputation as well as I do, he would have said your former writings and

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measures would secure attention to your biography and Art of Virtue, and your biography and Art of Virtue in return would secure attention to them. This is an advantage attendant upon a various character and which brings all that belongs to it into greater play; and it is the more useful, as perhaps more persons are at a loss for the means of improving their minds and characters than they are for the time or the inclination to do it. If it encourages more writings of the same kind with your own, and induces more men to spend lives fit to be written, it will be worth all Plutarch's Lives put together. Considering your great age, the caution of your character, and peculiar style of thinking, it is not likely that anyone besides yourself can be sufficiently master of the facts of your life or the intentions of your mind. Besides all this, the immense revolution of the present period will necessarily turn our attention toward the author of it; and when virtuous principles have been pretended in it, it will be highly important to show that such have really influenced; and, as your own character will be the principal one to see a scrutiny, it is proper even for its effects upon your vast and rising country, as well as upon England and upon Europe, that it should stand respectable and eternal.

For the furtherance of human happiness I have always maintained that it is necessary to prove that a man is not even at present a vicious and detestable animal; and, still more, to prove that good management may greatly amend him; and it is for much the same reason that I am anxious to see the opinion established that there are fair characters existing among the individuals of the race, for the moment that all men, without exception, shall be conceived abandoned, good people will cease efforts deemed to be hopeless, and perhaps think of taking their share in the scramble of life, or at least of making it comfortable principally for themselves.

Extend your views even further; do not stop at those who speak the English tongue, but after having settled so many points in nature and politics, think of bettering the whole race of men.

This appeal was turning the tables on Franklin, and was happily effectual in causing him to resume his autobiography at Passy, near Paris, in the following year. This letter is almost prophetic of the place that Franklin was to hold in American life. Who can estimate the number of readers of the autobiography, and who can tell how many lives have been made useful by that work? Fifty years ago the means for securing an education in America were so imperfect that the autobiography became the great text-book for active minds among the young throughout the country, and there are few eminent men or women in America to-day, 60 years of age and native born, who will not place Franklin's Autobiography, not only among the few books that helped them, but as the first book that they read which opened up a possible career in life by self education, and which did for their generation even more than Sartor Resartus, or Emerson's Essays, forty years ago. Franklin's Autobiography was a book-making book, because his life was a book-making life.

The old Congress of the Confederation seems to have realized the value of education in politics, for in 1780 it requested Franklin to make a school book of the record of British atrocities in the American war. Franklin describes this commission to his English friend Hartley. The book was to have "thirty-five prints, designed here by good artists, and engraved, each expressing one or more of the different horrid facts to be inserted in the book, in order to impress the minds of children

and posterity with a deep sense of your bloody and insatiable malice and wickedness." But Franklin was not a Eugene Sue; he resolved not to proceed in the work, hoping that a reconciliation might take place, but added "every fresh instance of your devilism weakens that resolution and makes me abominate the thought of a reunion with such a people." Perhaps Benjamin Vaughan was wiser than Congress when he intimated that Franklin's Autobiography would make a great American school book. The influence of Franklin on American education has been even greater through his Autobiography than through the institutions which he founded or which were founded by his followers. Franklin was a prince of democrats. The great feature of his whole public policy is well said by Parton to be "to enlighten public opinion and to bring enlightened public opinion to bear upon the councils of public men." In this lofty effort he was surpassed by none of his contemporaries and has been equaled by few of his successors.

In 1784 a town of Norfolk County, Massachusetts, in its sixth year, took upon itself the name of Franklin, and, sending notice of the honor, informed Franklin that they would build a suitable tower to their church if he would present them with a bell. His famous reply asking them to accept a gift of books instead of a bell, "sense being preferable to sound," led to the founding of a public library in the town whose first books were selected by Dr. Price, at Franklin's request, limiting the choice to "such as are most proper to inculcate principles of sound religion and just government." Franklin was too busy, probably, to make out the list himself, and recommended, at the instance of his sister, Stennet's Discourse on Personal Religion. The books selected by Dr. Price were presented to the town; they suggest the ruling ideas of the period and most of them have been put upon the high shelves in the modern library.1

They were as follows: Clarke's Works; Hoadley's Works; Barrow's Works; Ridgeley's Works; Locke's Works; Sidney's Works; Montesquieu's Spirit of Laws; Blackstone's Commentaries; Watson's Tracts; Newton on the Prophecies; Law on Religion; Priestley's Institutes; Priestley's Corruptions; Price and Priestley; Lyndsey's Apology; Lyndsey's Sequel; Abernethy's Sermons; Duchal's Sermons; Price's Morals; Price on Providence; Price on Liberty; Price's Sermons; Price on the Christian Scheme; Needham's Free State; West and Lyttleton on the Resurrection; Stennet's Sermons; Addison's Evidences; Gordon's Tacitus; Backus's History; Lardner on the Logas; Watts's Orthodoxy and Charity; Brainerd's Life; Bellamy's True Religion; Doddridge's Life; Bellamy's Permission of Sin; Fordyce's Sermons; Hemmenway against Hopkins; Hopkins on Holiness; Life of Cromwell; Fulfilling of the Scriptures; Watts on the Passions; Watts's Logic; Edwards on Religion; Dickinson on the Five Points; Christian History; Prideaux's Connections; Cooper on Predestination; Cambridge Platform; Stoddard's Safety of Appearing; Burkett on Personal Reformation; Barnard's Sermons; Shepard's Sound Believer; History of the Rebellion; Janeway's Life; Hopkin's System; American Preacher; Emmons's Sermons; Thomas's Laws of Massachusetts; American Constitutions; Young's Night Thoughts; Pilgrim's Progress; Ames's Orations; Spectators; Life of Baron Trenk; Cheap Repository; Moral Repository; Fitch's Poems; Erskine's Sermons.