BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 31 



be a principal agent in the production of events as mighty 

 in themselves, and as pregnant with mighty consequences, 

 as any belonging to modern history. But our immediate 

 object is to exhibit a portrait of the diligent student, and 

 of the acute and patient philosopher. We have now to 

 speak of Franklin's famous electrical discoveries. Of these 

 discoveries we cannot, of course, here attempt to give any- 

 thing more than a very general account. 



The term electricity is derived from electron, the Greek 

 name for amber, which was known, even in ancient times, 

 to be capable of acquiring, by being rubbed, the curious 

 property of attracting very light bodies, such as small bits 

 of paper, when brought near to them. This virtue was 

 thought to be peculiar to the substance in question, and one 

 or two others, down to the close of the sixteenth century, 

 when our ingenious and philosophic countryman, William 

 Gilbert, a physician of London, announced for the first time, 

 in his Latin treatise on the magnet, that it belonged equally 

 to the diamond and many other precious stones; to glass, 

 sulphur, sealing wax, rosin, and a variety of other substances. 

 It is from this period that we are to date the birth of the 

 science of Electricity, which, however, continued in its infancy 

 for above a century, and could hardly, indeed, be said to 

 consist of anything more than a collection of unsystematized 

 and ill - understood facts until it attracted the attention of 

 Franklin. 



Among the facts, however, that had been discovered in this 

 interval, the following were the most important. In the first 

 place, the list of the substances capable ot being excited by 

 friction to a manifestation of electric virtue was considerably 

 extended. It was also found that the bodies which had been 



