borated, were not exhausting efforts, but rather natural specimens of the thoughts and sentiments which habitually dwelt within him. They testify that, with a mind profoundly meditative, deeply imbued with the powers of the world to come,' and ardently, even to impatience, desirous of the advancement of mankind in freedom, truth, and piety, he united vast stores of knowledge on a great variety of subjects, and an exquisite perception and appreciation of whatever was sublime or beautiful, whether in thought, nature, or art. The same strong principle of benevolence which has tinctured his writings with so vehement a hatred of all that tends to make men vicious and miserable, communicated to his conversation and demeanor a kindness, and even gentleness, which could not fail to win for him the love as well as veneration of all who knew him. His piety towards God, and charity towards men, were as deep as they were unostentatious. He was an unaffectedly great and good man.'

CHANGES FROM YOUTH TO AGE.

If a reflective aged man were to find at the bottom of an old chest-where it had lain forgotten fifty years-a record which he had written of himself when he was young, simply and vividly describing his whole heart and pursuits, and reciting verbatim many passages of the language which he sincerely uttered, would he not read it with more wonder than almost every other writing could at his age inspire? He would half lose the assurance of his identity, under the impression of this immense dissimilarity. It would seem as if it must be the tale of the juvenile days of some ancestor, with whom he had no connection but that of name. He would feel the young man thus introduced to him separated by so wide a distance of character as to render all congenial sociality impossible. At every sentence he would be tempted to repeat"Foolish youth, I have no sympathy with your feelings; I can hold no converse with your understanding." Thus, you see that in the course of a long life a man may be several moral persons, so various from one another that, if you could find a real individual that should nearly exemplify the character in one of these stages, and another

His celebrated friend, the late Robert Hall, bestowed upon him the following just and beautiful eulogium: "He paints metaphysics, and has the happy art of arraying what in other hands would appear cold and comfortless abstractions in the warmest colors of fancy. Without quitting his argument in pursuit of ornament or imagery, his imagination becomes the perfect handmaid of his reason, ready at every moment to spread her canvas, and present her pencil. But what affords us the deepest satisfaction is to find such talents enlisted on the side of true Christianity; nor can we forbear indulging a benevo lent triumph on the accession to the cause of evangelical piety of powers which its most distinguished opponents would be proud to possess.”

that should exemplify it in the next, and so on to the last, and then bring these several persons together into one society, which would thus be a representation of the successive states of one man, they would feel themselves a most heterogeneous party, would oppose and probably despise one another, and soon after separate, not caring if they were never to meet again. If the dissimilarity in mind were as great as in person, there would in both respects be a most striking contrast between the extremes at least, between the youth of seventeen and the sage of seventy. The one of these contrasts an old man might contemplate if he had a true portrait for which he sat in the bloom of his life, and should hold it beside a mirror in which he looks at his present countenance; and the other would be powerfully felt if he had such a genuine and detailed memoir as I have supposed. Might it not be worth while for a self-observant person, in early life, to preserve, for the inspection of the old man, if he should live so long, such a mental likeness of the young one? If it be not drawn near the time, it can never be drawn with sufficient accuracy.

ADVANTAGES OF DECISION OF CHARACTER.

One signal advantage possessed by a mind of this character is that its passions are not wasted. The whole amount of passion of which any mind, with important transactions before it, is capable, is not more than enough to supply interest and energy to its practical exertions; and, therefore, as little as possible of this sacred fire should be expended in a way that does not augment the force of action. But nothing can less contribute to vigor of effort than protracted anxious fluctuation, intermixed with resolutions decided and revoked, while yet nothing causes a greater expense of feeling. The heart is fretted and exhausted by being subjected to an alternation of contrary excitements, with the ultimate mortifying consciousness of their contributing to no end.

The long-wavering deliberation, whether to perform some bold action of difficult virtue, has often cost more to feeling than the action itself, or a series of such actions, would have cost; with the great disadvantage, too, of being relieved by none of that invigo ration which, to the man in action, would have sprung from the spirit of the action itself, and have renovated the ardor which it was expending. A person of decisive character, by consuming as little passion as possible in dubious musings and abortive resolutions, can secure its utmost value and use by throwing it all into effective operation.

Another advantage of this character is that it exempts from a great deal of interference and persecution, to which an irresolute man is subjected. Weakness, in every form, tempts arrogance; and a man may be allowed to wish for a kind of character with which stupidity and impertinence may not make so free. When a firm, decisive spirit is recognized, it is curious to see how the space clears around a man, and leaves him room and freedom. The disposition to interrogate, dictate, or banter preserves a respectful and politic distance, judging it not unwise to keep the peace with a person of so much energy. A conviction that he understands and that he wills with extraordinary force, silences the conceit that intended to perplex or instruct him, and intimidates the malice that was disposed to attack him. There is a feeling, as in respect to fate, that the decrees of so inflexible a spirit must be right, or that, at least, they will be accomplished.

But not only will he secure the freedom of acting for himself; he will obtain also, by degrees, the coincidence of those in whose company he is to transact the business of life. If the manners of such a man are free from arrogance, and he can qualify his firmness with a moderate degree of insinuation; and if his measures have partly lost the appearance of being the dictates of his will, under the wider and softer sanction of some experience that they are reasonable; both competition and fear will be laid to sleep, and his will may acquire an unresisted ascendency over many who will be pleased to fall into the mechanism of a system, which they find makes them more successful and happy than they could have been amidst the anxiety of adjusting plans and expedients of their own, and the consequences of often adjusting them ill. I have known several parents, both fathers and mothers, whose management of their families has answered this description; and has displayed a striking example of the facile complacency with which a number of persons, of different ages and dispositions, will yield to the decisions of a firm mind, acting on an equitable and enlightened system.

The last resource of this character is hard, inflexible pertinacity, on which it may be allowed to rest its strength, after finding it can be effectual in none of its milder forms. I remember admiring an instance of this kind, in a firm, sagacious, and very estimable old man, whom I well knew, and who is now dead. Being on a jury, in a trial of life and death, he was completely satisfied of the innocence of the prisoner; the other eleven were of the opposite opinion. But he was resolved the man should not be condemned; and, as the first effort for preventing it, very properly made application to the minds of his associates, spending

several hours in laboring to convince them. But he found he made no impression, while he was exhausting the strength which was to be reserved for another mode of operation. He then calmly told them, it should now be a trial who could endure confinement and famine the longest, and that they might be quite assured he would sooner die than release them at the expense of the prisoner's life. In this situation they spent about twenty-four hours, when, at length, all acceded to his verdict of acquittal.

CHARACTER OF FRANKLIN.

In a general moral estimate of Franklin's qualities, insincerity would seem to find very little place. His principles appear to have borne a striking correspondence, in simplicity, directness, and decision, to the character of his understanding. Credit may be given him for having, through life, very rarely prosecuted any purpose which he did not deliberately approve; and his manner of prosecution was distinguished, as far as appears, by a plain honesty in the choice of means, by a contempt of artifice and petty devices, by a calm inflexibility, and by a greater confidence of success than is usually combined with so clear and extended a foresight of the difficulties; but indeed that foresight of the difficulties. might justify his confidence of the adaptation of his measures for encountering them.

He appears to have possessed an almost invincible self-command, which bore him through all the negotiations, strifes with ignorance, obstinacy, duplicity, and opposing interest, and through tiresome delays and untoward incidents, with a sustained firmness, which preserved to him in all cases the most advantageous exercise of his faculties, and with a prudence of deportment beyond the attainment of the most disciplined adepts in mere political intrigue and court-practice. He was capable, indeed, of feeling an intense indignation, which comes out in full expression in some of the letters, relating to the character of the English government, as displayed in its policy toward America. This bitter detestation is the most unreservedly disclosed in some of his confidential correspondence with David Hartley, an English member of Parliament, a personal friend of Franklin, a constant advocate, to a measured extent, of the Americans, and a sort of self-offered, clandestine, but tacitly-recognized medium for a kind of understanding, at some critical periods, between the English government and Dr. Franklin, without costing the ministers the condescension

of official intercourse and inquiry. These vituperative passages have a corrosive energy, by virtue of force of mind and of justice, which perfectly precludes all appearance of littleness and mere temper in the indignation. It is the dignified character of Cato or Aristides. And if a manifestation of it in similar terms ever took place in personal conference with such men as were its objects, it must have appeared anything rather than an ungoverned irritability; nor would it have been possible to despise the indignant tone in which contempt was mingled with anger, as far as the two sentiments are compatible.

His predominant passion appears to have been a love of the useful. The useful was to him the summum bonum, the supreme fair, the sublime and beautiful, which it may not perhaps be extravagant to believe he was in quest of every week for half a century, in whatever place, or study, or practical undertaking. No department was too plain or humble for him to occupy himself in for this purpose; and in affairs of the most ambitious order this was still systematically his object. Whether in directing the constructing of chimneys or of constitutions, lecturing on the saving of candles or on the economy of national revenues, he was still intent on the same end, the question always being how to obtain the most of solid tangible advantage by the plainest and easiest means. There has rarely been a mortal, of high intelligence and flattering fame, on whom the pomps of life were so powerless. On him were completely thrown away the oratorical and poetical heroics about glory, of which heroics it was enough that he easily perceived the intention or effect to be, to explode all sober truth and substantial good, and to impel men, at the very best of the matter, through some career of vanity, but commonly through mischief, slaughter, and devastation, in mad pursuit of what amounts at last, if attained, to some certain quantity of noise, and empty show, and intoxicated transient elation. He was so far an admirable spirit for acting the Mentor to a young republic. It will not be his fault if the citizens of America shall ever become so servile to European example as to think a multitude of supernumerary places, enormous salaries, and a factitious economy of society, a necessary security or decoration of that political liberty which they enjoy in pre-eminence above every nation on earth. In these letters of their patriarch and philosopher, they will be amply warned, by repeated and emphatical representations, of the desperate mischief of a political system in which the public resources shall be expended in a way to give the government both the interest and the means to corrupt the people.