1901.] R03EXGARTEX — FRAXKLIX'S BAGATELLES. 123 



work, not merely on the routine addresses, memorials and letters 

 intended to persuade the French Government or inform that at 

 home, but in satires on the English methods of conducting the war, 

 use of the Indians, Hessians, etc.; in exposing the financial straits 

 and impending ruin of that country, and. in urging the advantage 

 of loans to America ; while there is good authority for ascribing to 

 him the partial editing of a periodical which was intended to 

 influence the French people in favor of the American cause, and 

 prepare them for the treaties of amity and alliance to which Frank- 

 lin eventually set his name. It was during his nine years' service 

 in France that he also wrote most of what have been since known 

 as the ' Bagatelles ' — little essays on many subjects, composed 

 for the amusement of ' la societe choisie de Franklin.' They were 

 written in his happiest vein, fifteen or twenty copies printed on his 

 private press at his home in Passy for the little circle for whom 

 they were intended." A little later Mr. Ford says : " The writings 

 of Franklin will never be complete. His known or recognizable 

 periodicals and contributions to periodicals, not in the two great 

 collections of his writings [no doubt Mr. Ford refers to Sparks and 

 Bigelow], would still only be a portion, though a large one, of what 

 he wrote." 



Now if so industrious a collector as Mr. Ford thus writes of 

 Franklin's "Bagatelles," it must be that he thought research 

 as to their number and time of printing was exhausted. Yet 

 the American Philosophical Society, founded by Franklin and 

 his associates of the Junto, is to-day in the possession of the largest 

 collection of his papers, and we are naturally interested in trying 

 to answer these questions : When and where did Franklin write 

 his " Bagatelles " ? How many copies of each did he print, and what 

 has become of them ? It is customary to evade answering such 

 inquiries by saying that Franklin was careless as to his papers, yet 

 the large collection, over seventy great folio volumes, of Franklin 

 Papers in the Library of the Philosophical Society, shows that he 

 at least knew the value of the letters addressed to him, and in this 

 collection they are preserved. Then, too, it is customary to charge 

 William Temple Franklin with indifference to his grandfather's 

 memory and fame, yet Mr. Stevens rescued from oblivion and 

 destruction a great mass of papers, now the property of the United 

 States, and carefully preserved in the Department of State. 



Prof. McMaster, in the fifth volume of his history, pp. 294-297, 



