1 86 Carson: Franklin 



whom the world belongs. Neither imagine you have 

 to do with a vulgar worldly wisdom. This amiable 

 mocker, who laughs at everything, is not the less kind- 

 hearted, a devoted patriot, and one of the sincerest 

 friends of humanity. His laugh is not that of Voltaire, 

 there is no bitterness in it. It is the benevolent smile of 

 an old man whom life has taught indulgence." 



It was a clear conception of the necessity for union 

 against a common foe which animated his plan at Al- 

 bany; it was his proud and dauntless Americanism which 

 sustained him before the privy council when denounced 

 by Wedderburn as a thief; it was his undying faith in 

 Democracy which preserved him unharmed when wor- 

 shipped and caressed by the descendant of sixty kings; 

 it was his undimmed vision of the future and his wise 

 sense of present peril which made him an architect of 

 our national government, and for these he must be held 

 in reverential remembrance. 



Combining the characters of a great scientific dis- 

 coverer and a founder of the Republic, in the one 

 capacity, fit to rank with Galileo and Newton, and in 

 the other with Washington, the builder of his own for- 

 tune, a poor printer's lad whose daring and happy genius 

 scaled the heights which enthrone the monarchs of man- 

 kind, tried by prosperity as well as adversity, self-taught 

 in all he knew, a writer famed for his style without a 

 classical education, beginning life in the garret and the 



