in history? Caesar and Alexander are
uniformly clement: Themistocles died by a draught of bull's blood:
Portia by swallowing red-hot pieces of charcoal.

_Franklin._ Certainly no woman or man could perform either of these
feats. In my opinion it lies beyond a doubt that Portia suffocated
herself by the fumes of charcoal; and that the Athenian, whose stomach
must have been formed on the model of other stomachs, and must
therefore have rejected a much less quantity of blood than would have
poisoned him, died by some chemical preparation, of which a bull's
blood might, or might not, have been part. Schoolmasters who thus
betray their trust, ought to be scourged by their scholars, like him
of their profession who underwent the just indignation of the Roman
Consul. You shut up those who are infected with the plague; why do you
lay no coercion on those who are incurably possessed by the legion
devil of carnage? When a creature is of intellect so perverted that he
can discern no difference between a review and a battle, between the
animating bugle and the dying groan, it were expedient to remove him,
as quietly as may be, from his devastation of God's earth and his
usurpation of God's authority. Compassion points out the cell for him
at the bottom of the hospital, and listens to hear the key turned in
the ward: until then the house is insecure.

_Shipley._ God grant our rulers wisdom, and our brethren peace!

_Franklin._ Here are but indifferent specimens and tokens. Those
fellows throw stones pretty well: if they practise much longer, they
will hit us: let me entreat you, my lord, to leave me here. So long as
the good people were contented with hooting and shouting at us, no
great harm was either done or apprehended: but now they are beginning
to throw stones, perhaps they may prove themselves more dexterous in
action than their rulers have done latterly in council.

_Shipley._ Take care, Doctor Franklin! _That_ was very near being the
philosopher's stone.

_Franklin._ Let me pick it up, then, and send it to London by the
diligence. But I am afraid your ministers, and the nation at large,
are as little in the way of wealth as of wisdom, in the experiment
they are making.

_Shipley._ While I was attending to you, William had started. Look! he
has reached them: they are listening to him. Believe me, he has all
the courage of an Englishman and of a Christian; and, if the stoutest
of them force him to throw off his new bla