EMINENT LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC MEN

OF AMERICA.

FRANKLIN.

THERE is no enquiry more interesting, and at the same time more instructive, than that which traces the progress of a great mind from its feeble beginnings to the period when it fills the world with its renown. Mankind are naturally curious to become acquainted with its early hopes and aspirations, and to learn what peculiar features distinguished it from other minds, and hence the charm thrown around autobiography. This charm is greatly enhanced when its pages are unsullied by that display of personal vanity, so difficult altogether to repress, and yet so injurious to the memory of its author when indulged in. It is this apparent truthfulness and absence of personal display which invest the lives of Gibbon and Hume with their remarkable fascination, and the want of these characteristics which mars Rousseau's Confessions and Byron's Letters, even more than the immoralities they so unblushingly display.

FRANKLIN fortunately left behind him an unfinished work of this class containing a sketch of his early years, which for perspicuity and unaffected simplicity has no superior and but w equals. From this we learn, that he was born in Boston,

on the 6th day of January, 1706. His father, Josiah Franklin, emigrated to America about 1682, from the small village of Ecton, in Northamptonshire, England, where the family occupied a freehold for upwards of three centuries, of about thirty acres. "This small estate," continues the autobiography, "would not have sufficed for their maintenance without the business of a smith, which had continued in the family down to my uncle's time, the eldest being always brought up to that employment, a custom which he and my father followed with regard to their eldest sons. When I searched the registers at Ecton, I found an account of their marriages and burials from the year 1555 only, as the registers kept did not commence previous thereto; I however learnt from it, that I was the youngest son of the youngest son for five generations back. My grandfather Thomas, who was born in 1598, lived at Ecton till he was too old to continue his business, when he retired to Banbury, in Oxfordshire, to the house of his son John, with whom my father served an apprenticeship. There my uncle died and lies buried. His eldest son Thomas lived in the house at Ecton, and left it with the land to his only daughter, who sold it to Mr. Isted, lord of the manor there."

His grandfather had four sons, viz: Thomas, John, Benjamin and Josiah. Thomas, the elder, was bred a smith, John a dyer, probably of wool, Benjamin a silk dyer, and Josiah, the father of the philosopher, after serving an apprenticeship with his elder brother John, become a tallow chandler, which business he prosecuted in Boston until his decease, obtaining from it a frugal but honest support, and the means of rearing humbly but reputably a large and worthy family of children. The father of Benjamin Franklin married quite young, and

HIS PARENTAGE.

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brought with him to America a family consisting of his wife and three children. He emigrated in company with a number of religious dissenters, to whose faith he was attached, but it does not appear that he was driven by religious zeal like many of his sect to seek an asylum in a new country, from the persecutions he had experienced in his native land. Of his father, Franklin says, that "he had an excellent constitution, was of middle stature, well set and very strong; he could draw prettily, (which from the specimens in a notebook kept by Franklin we conclude he could not,) was a little skilled in music; his voice was sonorous and agreeable, so that when he played on his violin and sung withal, as he was accustomed to do after the business of the day was over, it was extremely agreeable to hear him. He had some knowledge of mechanics, but his great excellence was his sound understanding and solid judgment."

"At his table he liked to have as often as he could some sensible friend or neighbor to converse with, and always took care to start some ingenious or useful topic for discourse, which might tend to improve the minds of his children."

Benjamin was the youngest son by a second wife, whose name was Abiah Folger, the daughter of Peter Folger, one of the earliest settlers in New England, and the author of a pamphlet on some controversial subject. Franklin was one of a very numerous family. His father had seven children by his first wife and ten by his second, of whom Benjamin remembers to have seen thirteen seated together at his father's table.

His elder brothers were all apprenticed to different trades, but Benjamin was sent to a grammar school, preparatory to

an education for the pulpit, towards which his uncle proposed to contribute by leaving him a short hand volume of the sermons of different clergymen taken by himself.

The increasing wants of his large family induced his father, in less than a year from the commencement of his studies, to alter his plan concerning his son and remove him from school, in order to make his services useful in contributing to the general maintenance of the family. He was accordingly at ten years of age made the errand boy of his father's tallow chandlery, and in this capacity was employed in carrying candles and soap to the houses of customers residing in Boston, besides performing various other offices connected with the trade, as cutting the wick for candles, and filling the moulds with tallow.

"I disliked," says he, "the trade, and had a strong inclination to go to sea, but my father declared against it; but residing near the water, I was much in it and on it; I learnt to swim well, and to manage boats, and when embarked with other boys I was commonly allowed to govern, especially in any case of difficulty; and upon other occasions I was generally the leader among the boys, and sometimes led them into scrapes, of which I will mention one, as it shows an early projecting public spirit, though not then justly conducted.

"There was a salt marsh which bounded part of the millpond, 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 quagmire. My proposal was to build a wharf there for us to stand upon, and I showed my comrades a large heap of stones, which were intended for a new house near the

ÆT. 10.]

FONDNESS FOR BOOKS.

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marsh, and which would very well suit our purpose. Accordingly, in the evening, when the workmen were gone home, I assembled a number of my playfellows and we worked diligently like so many emmets;-sometimes two or three to a stone, till we had brought them all to make our little wharf. The next morning the workmen were surprised at missing the stones which formed our wharf; inquiry was made after the authors of this transfer; we were discovered, complained of, and corrected by our fathers, and though I demonstrated the utility of our work, mine convinced me, that, that which was not truly honest, could not be truly useful."

Franklin was from his earliest years passionately fond of books, and devoured with avidity whatever species of reading came to his hand. His father's library was unfortunately but scantily stocked, and consisted chiefly of works on the religious controversies of the day, which he read, from the bare yearning for this pastime, and probably with but little profit to himself. There were a few books in this small collection of a different character, to which Franklin has attributed some of the peculiar characteristics of his subsequent life. Among these were Plutarch's Lives and Dr. Mather's Essay on the means of doing good. This latter book was quite a favorite with him, and he imagined it had a material influence in fashioning his train of thinking, and modifying the principal events of his future life. Every individual is certainly the best judge of those causes which affect his own mind; but we cannot avoid the conclusion that Franklin owed much more to the intuitive gifts of his intellect than to any of the chance circumstances alluded to by him. It does appear to us that the associations of his early boyhood were