r homely
fare, and drank their simple beverage, mixed with them on a
footing of the most entire and perfect equality, and conversed
with them even in their own vicious and depraved pronunciation."
By such means he soon acquired and long retained a large measure
of popularity, and he applied himself with zeal and success before
any audience, and on every occasion which arose, to increase and
perpetuate the estrangement between the North American Colonies
and England.

FRANKLIN.

Dr. Benjamin Franklin is one of those men who have made the task
of succeeding biographers more difficult by having been in part
their own. He was born at Boston in 1706, the youngest of ten
sons. "My father," he says, "intended to devote me, as the tithe
of his sons, to the service of the Church;" but on further
reflection, the charges of a college education were thought too
burthensome, and young Benjamin became a journeyman printer. From
a very early age he showed a passionate fondness for reading, and
much ingenuity in argument, but, as he acknowledges, had at first
contracted a disputatious and wrangling turn of conversation. "I
have since observed," he says, "that persons of good sense seldom
fall into it, except lawyers, University-men, and generally men of
all sorts who have been bred at Edinburgh."

Young Franklin was at first bound apprentice to one of his elder
brothers, a printer at Boston; but some differences arising
between them, he proceeded to Philadelphia, where he soon obtained
employment, and ere long set up for himself. His success in life
was secured by his great frugality, industry, and shrewdness. In
his own words: "I spent no time in taverns, games, or frolics of
any kind; reading was the only amusement I allowed myself." His
knowledge and shrewdness,--great zeal in urging any improvements,
and great ingenuity in promoting them,--speedily raised him high in
the estimation of his fellow-townsmen, and enabled him to take a
forward part in all the affairs of his province. In England, and
indeed all Europe, he became celebrated by his experiments and
discoveries in electricity. These may deserve the greater credit
when we recollect both their practical utility and their
unassisted progress,--how much the pointed rods which he introduced
have t