ments, let such look to the almost inexhaustible treasures of learning and genius, which the illustrious dead and the illustrious living have accumulated, and mark the humility allied to true intellectual greatness, and then blush for their folly in thinking so highly of themselves. Humility, while it is so beautiful and becoming, is also highly advantageous. It is a habit favourable of itself to mental improvement, as it opens the mind to receive instruction with docility, and makes one willing to be taught and corrected.-J. Stoughton.

AMERICAIN

FRANKLIN.1

1. One of the most remarkable men, certainly of our times, as a politician, or of any age, as a philosopher, was Franklin; who also stands alone in combining together these two characters, the greatest that man can sustain; and in this, that having borne the first part in enlarging science by one of the greatest discoveries ever made, he

Born at Boston 1706; died, 1790.

bore the second part in founding one of the greatest empires in the world.

2. In this truly great man everything seems to concur that goes toward the constitution of exalted merit. First, he was the architect of his own fortune. Born in the humblest station, he raised himself by his talents and his industry, first to the place in society which may be attained with the help only of ordinary abilities, great application, and good luck; but next to the loftier heights which a daring and happy genius alone can scale; and the poor printer boy, who at one period of his life had no covering to shelter his head from the dews of night, rent in twain the proud dominion of England, and lived to be the ambassador of a commonwealth which he had formed, at the court of the haughty monarchs of France who had been his allies.

3. Then, he had been tried by prosperity as well as adverse fortune, and had passed unhurt through the perils of both. No ordinary apprentice, no commonplace journeyman, ever laid the foundation of his independence in habits of industry and temperance more deep than he did, whose genius was afterwards to rank him with the Galileos and the Newtons of the Old World. No patrician born to shine in courts, or assist at the councils of monarchs, ever bore his honours in a lofty station more easily, or was less spoilt by the enjoyment of them, than this common workman did when negotiating with royal representatives, or caressed by all the beauty and fashion of the most brilliant court in Europe.

4. Again, he was self-taught in all he knew. His hours of study were stolen from those of sleep and of meals, or gained by some ingenious contrivance for reading while the work of his daily calling went on. Assisted by none of the helps which affluence tenders to the studies of the rich, he had to supply the place of tutors by redoubled diligence, and of commentaries by repeated perusal. Nay, the possession of books was to be obtained by copying what the art which he himself exercised furnished easily to others.1

1 Franklin began life as a printer's boy.

5. Next, the circumstances under which others succumb he made to yield, and bent to his own purposes. A successful leader of a revolt that ended in complete triumph after appearing desperate for years; a great discoverer in philosophy, without the ordinary helps to knowledge; a writer famed for his chaste style, without a classical education; a skilful negotiator, though never bred to politics; ending as a favourite, nay, a pattern of fashion, when the guest of frivolous courts, the life which he had begun in garrets and in workshops.

6. Lastly, combinations of faculties in others deemed impossible, appeared easy and natural in him. The philosopher, delighting in speculation, was also eminently a man of action. Ingenious reasoning, refined and subtle consultation, were in him combined with prompt resolution and inflexible firmness of purpose. To a lively fancy he joined a learned and deep reflection; his original and inventive genius stooped to the convenient alliance of the most ordinary prudence in every-day affairs; the mind that soared above the clouds, and was conversant with the loftiest of human contemplations, disdained not to make proverbs and feign parables for the guidance of apprenticed youths and servile maidens; and the hands. that sketched a free constitution for a whole continent, or drew down the lightning from heaven, easily and cheerfully lent themselves to simplify the apparatus by which truths were to be illustrated or discoveries pursued.

7. His whole course, both in acting and in speculation, was simple and plain, ever preferring the easiest and shortest road, nor ever having recourse to any but the simplest means to compass his ends. His policy rejected all refinements, and aimed at accomplishing its purposes by the most rational and obvious expedients. His manner of reasoning was manly and cogent, the address of a rational being to others of the same order; and so concise that, preferring decision to discussion, he never exceeded a quarter of an hour in any public address.

8. His correspondence upon business, whether private or state affairs, is a model of clearness and compendious

shortness; nor can any state paper surpass, in dignity and impression, those of which he is believed to have been the author in the earlier part of the American revolutionary war. But of all this great man's scientific excellencies, the most remarkable is the smallness, the simplicity, the apparent inadequacy of the means which he employed in his experimental researches. His discoveries were made with hardly any apparatus at all. The experiments by which the identity of lightning and electricity was demonstrated, were made with a sheet of brown paper, a bit of twine, a silk thread, and an iron key.

9. Upon the integrity of this great man, whether in public or private life, there rests no stain. Strictly honest, and ever scrupulously punctual in all his dealings, he preserved in the highest fortune that regularity which he had practised as well as inculcated in the lowest. In domestic life he was faultless, and in the intercourse of society, delightful. There was a constant good humour and a playful wit, easy and of high relish, without any ambition to shine, the natural fruit of his lively fancy, his solid, natural good sense, and his cheerful temper, that gave his conversation an unspeakable charm, and alike suited every circle from the humblest to the most elevated. -Lord Brougham (1778–1868).

THE RESULTS OF COMMERCE.

1. If we consider our own country in its natural prospect, without any of the benefits and advantages of commerce, what a barren, uncomfortable spot of earth falls to our share! Natural historians tell us that no fruit grows originally among us, that our climate of itself, and without the assistance of art, can make no further advances towards a plum than a sloe; that our melons, our peaches, our figs, our apricots, and our cherries are strangers imported in different ages, and naturalized in our gardens; and that they would all degenerate if wholly

neglected by the planter, and left to the mercy of our sun and soil.

2. Nor has traffic more enriched our vegetable world than it has improved the whole of nature among us. Our ships are laden with the harvest of every climate. Our tables are stored with oils, and spices, and wines; our rooms are adorned with the workmanship of Japan; our morning's draught comes to us from the remotest corners of the earth; we repair our bodies by the drugs of America, and repose ourselves under Indian canopies.

3. The vineyards of France have been called our gardens, the spice-islands our hotbeds, the Persians our silkweavers, and the Chinese our potters. Nature, indeed, furnishes us with the bare necessaries of life, but traffic gives us a great variety of what is useful, and at the same time supplies us with everything that is convenient and ornamental. Nor is it the least part of our happiness that, whilst we enjoy the remotest products of the north and south, we are free from those extremities of weather which gave them birth; that our eyes are refreshed with green fields, at the same time that our palates are feasted with fruits that grow between the tropics.

4. Nature seems to have taken particular care to disseminate her blessings among the different regions of the world with an eye to this mutual intercourse and traffic among mankind, that the natives of the several parts of the globe might have a kind of dependence upon one another, and be united together by their common interest.

5. Almost every degree produces something peculiar to it. The food often grows in one country and the sauce in another. The fruits of Portugal are corrected by the products of Barbadoes, and the infusion of a China plant is sweetened by the pith of an Indian cane. The Philippine Islands give a flavour to our European bowls. The single dress of a woman of quality is often the product of a hundred climates. The muff and the fan come together from the different ends of the earth. The scarf is sent from the torrid zone, and the tippet from beneath the pole.

6. Our English merchant converts the tin of his own