34 HISTORY OF ELECTRICITY. 



scarcely anything besides the power of attraction. 

 Franklin's real merit as a discoverer was, that he 

 was one of the first who distinctly conceived the 

 electrical charge as a derangement of equilibrium. 

 The great fame which, in his day, he enjoyed, arose 

 from the clearness and spirit with which he narrated 

 his discoveries ; from his dealing with electricity in 

 the imposing form of thunder and lightning; and 

 partly, perhaps, from his character as an Ameri- 

 can and a politician; for he was already, in 1736, 

 engaged in public affairs as clerk to the General 

 Assembly of Pennsylvania, though it was not till a 

 later period of his life that his admirers had the 

 occasion of saying of him 



Eripuit coelis fulmen sceptrumque tyrannis; 



Born to control all lawless force, all fierce and baleful sway, 

 The thunder's bolt, the tyrant's rod, alike he wrenched away. 



jEpinus and Coulomb were two of the most 

 eminent physical philosophers of the last century, 

 and laboured in the way peculiarly required by that 

 generation ; whose office it was to examine the re- 

 sults, in particular subjects, of the general concep- 

 tion of attraction and repulsion, as introduced by 

 Newton. The reasonings of the Newtonian period 

 had, in some measure, anticipated all possible theo- 

 ries resembling the electrical doctrine of ./Epinus 

 and Coulomb; and, on that account, this doctrine 

 could not be introduced and confirmed in a sudden 

 and striking manner, so as to make a great epoch. 

 Accordingly, Dufay, Symmer, Watson, Franklin, 



