IVE OF PENNSYLVANIA IN ENGLAND: RETURN HOME

It was not possible to make a world-wide reputation in the public
affairs of the province of Pennsylvania; but so much fame as opportunity
would admit of had by this time been won by Franklin. In respect of
influence and prestige among his fellow colonists none other came near
to him. Meanwhile among all his crowding occupations he had found time
for those scientific researches towards which his heart always yearned.
He had flown his famous kite; had entrapped the lightning of the clouds;
had written treatises, which, having been collected into a volume, "were
much taken notice of in England," made no small stir in France, and were
"translated into the Italian, German, and Latin languages." A learned
French abbe, "preceptor in natural philosophy to the royal family, and
an able experimenter," at first controverted his discoveries and even
questioned his existence. But after a little time this worthy scientist
became "assur'd that there really existed such a person as Franklin at
Philadelphia," while other distinguished scientific men of Europe
united in the adoption of his theories. Kant called him the 'Prometheus
of modern times.' Thus, in one way and another, his name had probably
already come to be more widely known than that of any other living man
who had been born on this side of the Atlantic. It might have been even
much more famous, had he been more free to follow his own bent, a
pleasure which he could only enjoy in a very limited degree. In 1753 he
wrote: "I am so engaged in business, public and private, that those more
pleasing pursuits [philosophical inquiries] are frequently interrupted,
and the chain of thought necessary to be closely continued in such
disquisitions is so broken and disjointed that it is with difficulty I
satisfy myself in any of them." Similar complaints occur frequently, and
it is certain that his extensive philosophical labors were all conducted
in those mere cracks and crannies of leisure scantily interspersed amid
the hours of a man apparently overwhelmed with the functions of active
life.

He was now selected by the Assembly to encounter the perils of crossing
the Atlantic upon an important mission in behalf of his province. For a
long while past the relationship between the Penns, unworthy sons of the
great William, and now the proprietaries, on the one side, and their
quasi subjects, the people of the province, upon the other, had been