fire company, assisted
in founding a hospital, and improved the cleaning and lighting of
streets. He developed journalism, established the American
Philosophical Society, the public library in Philadelphia, and the
University of Pennsylvania. He organized a postal system for the
colonies, which was the basis of the present United States Post
Office. Bancroft, the eminent historian, called him "the greatest
diplomatist of his century." He perfected the Albany Plan of Union for
the colonies. He is the only statesman who signed the Declaration of
Independence, the Treaty of Alliance with France, the Treaty of Peace
with England, and the Constitution. As a writer, he has produced, in
his _Autobiography_ and in _Poor Richard's Almanac_, two works that
are not surpassed by similar writing. He received honorary degrees
from Harvard and Yale, from Oxford and St. Andrews, and was made a
fellow of the Royal Society, which awarded him the Copley gold medal
for improving natural knowledge. He was one of the eight foreign
associates of the French Academy of Science.

The careful study of the _Autobiography_ is also valuable because of
the style in which it is written. If Robert Louis Stevenson is right
in believing that his remarkable style was acquired by imitation then
the youth who would gain the power to express his ideas clearly,
forcibly, and interestingly cannot do better than to study Franklin's
method. Franklin's fame in the scientific world was due almost as much
to his modest, simple, and sincere manner of presenting his
discoveries and to the precision and clearness of the style in which
he described his experiments, as to the results he was able to
announce. Sir Humphry Davy, the celebrated English chemist, himself an
excellent literary critic as well as a great scientist, said: "A
singular felicity guided all Franklin's researches, and by very small
means he established very grand truths. The style and manner of his
publication on electricity are almost as worthy of admiration as the
doctrine it contains."

Franklin's place in literature is hard to determine because he was not
primarily a literary man. His aim in his writings as in his life work
was to be helpful to his fellow-men. For him writing was never an end
in itself, but always a means to an end. Yet his success as a
scientist, a statesman, and a diplomat, as well as socially, was in no
little part due to his ability as a writer. "His letters charmed all,
an