1901.] R03ENGARTEN — FRANKLIN' S BAGATELLES. 133 



versations at Paris were filled with disputes about the music of 

 Gluck and Picini, a German and an Italian musician, who divided 

 the town into violent parties. A friend of this lady having ob- 

 tained a copy of it, under a promise not to give another, did not 

 observe that promise ; so that many have been taken, and it is 

 become as public as such a thing can well be that is not printed ; 

 but I could not dream of its being heard of at Madrid [where 

 Carmichael was Secretary to the American Legation while Mr. Jay 

 was Minister there]. The thought was partly taken from a little 

 piece of some unknown writer, which I met with fifty years since 

 in a newspaper, and which the sight of The Ephemera brought to 

 my recollection." 



It is eminently proper that the Franklin Papers should be 

 cared for in the Society of which he was the founder and the 

 first President, and with which his name is so indissolubly con- 

 nected ; it is the duty of this Society to see that these papers 

 be put into a good condition, that they may be freely used by 

 students. Unluckily, when this gift was made to the Society there 

 were few men who knew how to make the best use of it. The late 

 Mr. Trego, then the Librarian, had this vast and heterogeneous mass 

 of original papers, including an infinite number of letters addressed to 

 Franklin and many important papers belonging to the various phases 

 of his long and active and varied career in science, in local and colo- 

 nial and national and international affairs, roughly mounted and still 

 more roughly bound in an indefinite and vague sort of chronological 

 order. In the course of years access was so carelessly given that some 

 autograph hunters have ruthlessly cut out signatures and thus de- 

 faced valuable original papers. A rough index precedes some of the 

 volumes, but many of them are largely made up of papers that are 

 only described by general headings. Later volumes of papers, long 

 unbound and found merely tied up in the original packages — no 

 doubt by Temple Franklin or Bache or Duane, for some of the fre- 

 quent removals from Passy to Philadelphia and then from pillar to 

 post, until they finally reached a safe haven of rest in the Library of 

 the Philosophical Society — have been carefully mounted, well ordered 

 and arranged, and bound in a creditable way, so that these are now 

 perfectly accessible and safe for use, under the watchful eye of the 

 present custodian, the Librarian, to whose intelligent care this 

 Society is indebted for the order and preservation of many of the 

 important original papers in our archives. Under his direction, 



