BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. IC; 



according to the use he wished to make of them. He finally 

 hit upon a more convenient plan and had his glasses cut, and 

 " half of each kind associated in the same circle," the upper 

 semicircle of one kind and the lower of the other, so that he 

 was able to wear the same spectacles constantly, having, as he 

 said, "only to move my eyes up or down as I want to see dis- 

 tinctly far or near, the proper glasses being always ready." 

 He wore these glasses with great comfort, and maintained that 

 he was even able to understand French better by their help ; 

 for when at table he could observe what he was eating with one 

 set of the glasses and look with the other into the faces of the 

 friends who spoke to him, reading the sounds which his foreign 

 ears heard only imperfectly, in the movements of their lips. 



There is hardly a subject of knowledge, art, life, and econ- 

 omy that is not touched upon and illuminated in Franklin's 

 letters. We find in them observations concerning the prevail- 

 ing views of life and death as not showing sufficient under- 

 standing; a mode of rendering meat tender by electricity; 

 supplies of saltpetre and gunpowder for the war, with a wish 

 that pikes might be introduced, and bows and arrows, for the 

 use of which six reasons are given ; M. Volta's experiments 

 and the length of time for which the electric force may be kept 

 in the Leyden vial ; true science and its progress ; the discov- 

 ery of the great use of trees in producing wholesome air; a 

 slowly sensitive hygrometer, suggested by such incidents as 

 the shrinking in America so as to be tight, and the swelling in 

 Europe so as to afford ample room, of a mahogany magnet box 

 and a telescope box; the Indian languages; the antiquity of 

 the mariner's compass ; the route by which the Phoenicians 

 came to America, if they did come ; Lavoisier's experiment of 

 melting platinum in fine charcoal blown upon by dephlogisti- 

 cated air; a comet seen in Gibraltar, concerning which data 

 from Herschel are enclosed to Rittenhouse; the spots on the 

 sun ; the temperature of the water of the ocean ; the civil serv- 

 ice, in which the theory is declared to Henry Lawrence that 

 every place of honour should be made a place of burden : " The 

 malady [of government] consists in the enormous salaries, 

 emoluments, and patronage of great offices " ; the logographic 

 mode of printing ; thanks to Lavoisier for his Nomenclature 

 Chimique; a collection of songs and music of American com- 

 position, " the first of the kind that has appeared here"; a 



