196 



happiness, by the prevention or mitigation of evil, was man's 

 highest function. " He seems," says Weems, " to have been 

 all eye, all ear, all touch, to every thing that affected human 

 happiness," and he died with his eyes fixed upon "the picture 

 of Him who came into the world to teach men to love one 

 another. On his' death-bed he often returned thanks to God 

 for having so kindly cast his lot of life in the very time of all 

 others when he would have chosen to live for the great pur- 

 poses of usefulness and pleasure." 



Is there in history a more touching memory than that of 

 Franklin awaiting the coming of death, the venerable sage, 

 the pride and glory of his own land, the admiration of Eu- 

 rope, making excuses for the moanings which were occasion- 

 ally forced from him by the severity of his pains — afraid that 

 he did not bear them as he ought, while he observed his 

 grateful sense of the many blessings he had received from the 

 Supreme Being, who had raised him from small and low 

 beginnings to such high rank and consideration among men. 



I have already said that nothing was further from his 

 thoughts than to obtain for himself literary fame. He took no 

 care of his own writings, and made no effort to secure the pub- 

 lication of them. And still, a century after his death, he stands 

 prominently forth as the only great literary man of America 

 in colonial days and in the first fifty years of the Republic. 



No one who has held in his hand a copy of Franklin's edi- 

 tion of Cicero's " Cato Major " can doubt that the man who 

 made it had the soul of an artist. No one who has read his 

 tender and exquisitely graceful preface to this beautiful edi- 

 tion can question that he had the heart of a poet, and the 

 touch of a master of letters. 



When twenty-five he founded a great public library, the 

 earliest in America, that others as well as he might enjoy the 

 companionship of books. 



