who managed those institutions humanely and intelligently, in accordance with the enlightened spirit of the age. Among the former class we necessarily created enemies among the latter, friends; but for obvious reasons there were ten enemies for every one friend!

We have found the ratio just about the same among the heads of our educational institutions of the various grades. This is quite in accordance with the fact that the things which surprised us most in our recent excursions were the ignorance and false pretensions of so large a number of those claiming to be great educators. No doubt the remainder of this numerous class will be delighted to learn that they need not fear to receive any visit from us at least for some time to come; but we have collected facts enough to afford us materials for more articles than we can write on their peculiar style of imposture for at least a year to come.

As for the opposite class of institutions, these we have been in the habit of visiting, at intervals, for a quarter of a century, on the invitation of their heads; and we shall regard it as a privilege to do the same in the future, as often as we can. It only remains for us in this discursive, desultory paper to tender our sincere thanks to those true educators who, by their courtesy and kindness, have contributed to render our excursions as agreeable and pleasant as possible to ourselves. Nor do we cherish any worse feeling toward those whose most faithful prototypes are Wackford Squeers and Dr. Blimber, than to wish that they betake themselves to some business for which they are better calculated, both by nature and education, than for teaching.

NOTICES AND CRITICISMS.

HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY.

The Life of Benjamin Franklin. Written by himself. Now first edited from original manuscripts, and from his Printed Correspondence and other Writings. By JOIN BIGELOW. 3 vols., 12 mo. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. London: Scribner & Co.

1875.

MOST cordially do we welcome this autobiography of one whose name, as a man, a statesman, and a philosopher, has ever been a just source of pride to the American people. Biographies of Franklin have been issued without number; but we have here a veritable revelation of the great man himself, in his every-day life, as he appeared to his family, his friends, and his contemporaries-told with a simplicity and naiveté characteristic of the writer-not, altogether, devoid of vanity, as he frankly admits, saying, good-humoredly:

"Most people dislike vanity in others, whatever share they may have of it themselves; but I give it fair quarter wherever I meet with it, being persuaded that it is often productive of good to the possessor, and to others that are within his sphere of action; and therefore, in many cases, it would not be altogether absurd if a man were to thank God for his vanity, among the other comforts of life."— vol. i., p. 82.

The autobiography proper-that is to say, the portion expressly written by Dr. Franklin for the purpose of serving as memoirs of his life—is limited to two small manuscripts, both of which are contained in the opening volume of this work. Of these the first appears to have been written in England in 1771, and is addressed to the writer's son, William Franklin, at that time Governor of New Jersey. This portion, not having been intended for the public eye, possesses, in a higher degree than the rest, the charm of naturalness, and brings before us the carly life of the writer with a fidelity almost photographic. We have here the evidence of what a man may become under the most adverse circumstances with no other resources than an untiring intellect and an indomitable will.

Born of humble parents, Benjamin Franklin had, at the outset, no further advantages of education than one year passed at such a grammar school as Boston was able to furnish in the early part of the eighteenth century, and another passed at a still smaller educational institution. Of even these advantages he was deprived at ten years of age, and set to work at his father's business of tallow-chandler and soap-boiler. There are few laborers at the present day who have not the opportunities of a better education afforded them under our common-school system. But this brief period of education had developed in the mind of young Franklin an insatiable thirst for knowledge. Of the means by

which he contrived to gratify this desire, he has left us the following interesting account:

"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 afterwards sold them to enable me to buy R. Burton's Historical Collections; they were small chapmen's books, and cheap, forty or fifty in all."-vol. i., p. 108.

This absorbing passion for books having induced young Franklin's father to apprentice him to his brother as a printer, he was enabled to extend his stock of knowledge by borrowing books from the bookseller's apprentices, which he would sometimes sit up all night for the purpose of reading. But he had before him a higher object than mere entertainment. He taught himself arithmetic, which he had not properly mastered at school, and commenced the study of rhetoric and logic. Dr. Franklin has left us a curious statement of the literary condition of America, not only in his youth, but at the period when this first part of his autobiography was written.

"My brother had in 1720 or 1721 begun to print a newspaper. It was the second that appeared in America, and was called the New England Courant. The only one before it was the Boston News Letter. I remember his being dissuaded by some of his friends from the undertaking, as not likely to succeed, one newspaper being, in their judgment, enough for America. At this time (1771) there are not less than five and twenty !"—vol. i., p. 115.

Events, in themselves trifling, are often the turning-points in our lives. A quarrel with his brother, who in revenge denounced him to the other printers, induced Franklin to seek for employment in some other city, and failing to find an opening in New York, he proceeded to Philadelphia, with which city his name is inseparably connected. Here his superiority to the Philadelphia printers soon enabled him to procure employment, and in course of time placed him at the head of the business in that city.

The second portion of the Memoirs, commenced at Passy in 1774, and finished at Philadelphia in 1778, except a brief postscript added in the last year of Dr. Franklin's life, was avowedly written for publication, and is, of course, less colloquial and confidential than the earlier manuscript. It is impossible to read this portion of the work without feeling impressed with the extent to which Philadelphia is indebted to Dr. Franklin even at the present day. While still an obscure citizen in a town which at that period did not contain a single bookseller's shop, he originated, by his own exertions, the Philadelphia Public Library, an institution still existing, and now numbering upwards of

"In New York and Philadelphia the printers were indeed stationers; they sold only paper, etc., almanacs, ballads, and a few common school-books. Those who loved reading were obliged to send for their books from England."-vol. i., P. 220.

70,000 volumes. He organized the first Fire Company-the Unionand induced the citizens to form themselves into volunteer fire companies. He effected the lighting and paving of the streets of Philadelphia, and laid the foundation of the first public school. Much of this was effected by the aid of the Junta, a literary society which Franklin had organized among the youth of the city, and which eventually became an engine of no small political influence in the province of Pennsylvania.

While thus exerting himself for the improvement of the city of his adoption, Franklin did not relax his efforts for self-improvement. By private study he mastered the French, Italian, and Spanish languages, and acquired considerable knowledge of the Latin and Greek. But his most remarkable project was a scheme he devised for arriving at moral perfection, and which he reduced to writing and carefully put in practice. This scheme, from its very vastness, necessarily failed in its object-but results were accomplished by its practice which are manifest through the whole of Franklin's life.

The autobiography proper terminates with the arrival of Dr. Franklin in England, in 1756, as agent for the colony of Pennsylvania. The remainder of his history is furnished from his correspondence, which has been carefully collected, and is published in chronological order. We have here an account from an eye witness, of the most important period in our country's history-seen from a peculiar point of viewfor Dr. Franklin was, during and prior to the Revolution, resident in England and France alternately, and witnessed the progress of events from a stand-point where they were inaccessible to most Americans. These letters, besides their value as a contemporaneous history of the period, possess a charm peculiarly their own. They are shrewd, racy, full of humor and an irony at once delicate and profound, which plays with the same grace around the question of a lady's domestic and social engagements, and that of the British government's ideas of colonial policy. It is characteristic of Franklin, that, while so long domesticated in the centres of the most artificial civilizations in the world, he never appears to have lost his preference for the (at that time real) simplicity of his own country and her institutions. It is probable that at this period many Americans were looking with envy at the state of things existing in the British Islands, and comparing their own condition regretfully with that of their friends in the old country. This disposition Dr. Franklin good-humoredly rebukes as follows:

"If they should ever envy the trade of these countries, I can put them in a way to obtain a share of it. Let them, with three-fourths of the people of Ireland, live the year round on potatoes and buttermilk, without shirts, then may their merchants export beef, butter, and linen. Let them, with the generality of the common people of Scotland, go barefoot, then may they make large exports in shoes and stockings, and, if they will be content to wear rags, like the spinners and

weavers of England, they may make cloths and stuffs for all parts of the world. Had I never been in the American Colonies, but were to form my judgment of civil society by what I have lately seen, I should never advise a nation of savages to admit of civilization, for I assure you that, in the possession and enjoyment of the various comforts of life, compared to these people, every Indian is a gentleman, and the effect of this kind of civil society seems to be the depressing multitudes below the savage state, that a few may be raised above it."- vol. ii., p. 99.

In one respect these letters disappoint us. While presenting a complete portrait of Franklin as a man, a statesman, and a philosopher, we find in them little or nothing respecting him as a man of science. Remembering what has been accomplished by Franklin in the world of science, we might have hoped for some account of his researches in the walks of science. But of this, with the exception of two brief references to the lightning-rod in his letters, we find nothing.

We are, nevertheless, deeply indebted to Mr. Bigelow for the judicious, convenient, and agreeable form into which he has condensed a life of Franklin from his written memoirs and printed correspondence. Few men have bequeathed to posterity a record so instructive. That he was self-taught constitutes only a part, and by no means the chief part, of his greatness. Far from holding the limited ideas commonly entertained by so-called self-taught geniuses, who measure their attainments rather by comparison with their advantages than by their actual value, he regarded no education as sufficient, while more remained to be acquired. Although in science he attained a degree of eminence rarely equalled, he did not consider the time lost that was devoted to the study of languages, as his acquirements in the ancient and modern tongues clearly show. In fact, if there be one characteristic of Franklin's understanding more remarkable than its acuteness, it is its perfect balance; care, study, and finish evidenced in every department; haste and indifference in none. In these days, when men with a small smattering of crude dicta, hastily gathered from the pages of some encyclopædia, appear before the world in the character of "scientists," it is refreshing to turn to the study of an intellect where all is symmetrical, thorough, and genuine. That the life and letters of Franklin are less familiar than is to be desired among the present generation, is due mainly to the voluminous, clumsy character of most of the editions in which they have hitherto been presented to the world. In the present collection, Mr. Bigelow has very judiciously supplied a want which has long been felt; and it is to be hoped that the event may prove him to have conferred a permanent benefit on his countrymen by familiarizing their minds with the career and principles of one whom he justly styles "the most eminent journalist, philosopher, diplomatist, and statesman of his time."