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. 



./Epinus 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 jEpinus 

 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, 





