this grave philofopher knew how to converse with the other fex, to infpire them with a taste for domeftic occupations, to hold out to them the prize attendant upon honour unaccompanied by reproach, and inftil the duty of cultivating the first precepts of education, in order to teach them to their children, and thus to acquit the debt due to nature, and fulfil the hope of fociety! It must be acknowledged that, in his own country, he addreffed himself to minds capable of comprehending him.

Immortal females of America! I will tell it to the daughters of France, and they only are fit to applaud you! You have attained the utmost of what your fex is capable; you poffefs the beauty, the fimplicity, the manners, at once natural and pure the primitive graces of the golden age. It was among you that liberty was firft to have its origin. But the empire of freedom, which is extended to France, is about to carry your manners along with it, and produce a revolution in morals as well as in politics,

Already our female citizens, for they have lately become fuch, are not any longer occupied with thofe frivolous ornaments, and vain pleafures, which were nothing more than the amufements of flavery; they have awakened the love of liberty in the bofoms of fathers of brothers, and of hufbands; they have encouraged them to make the moft generous facrifices; their delicate hands have removed the earth, dragged it along, and helped to elevate the immenfe amphitheatre of the grand confederation. It is no longer the love of voluptuous foftness that attracts their regard; it is the facred fire of patriotifm.

The laws which are to reform education, and with it the national manners, are already prepared; they shall advance, they fhall fortify the caufe of liberty by means of their happy influence, and become the fecond faviours of their country!

Franklin did not omit any of the means of being useful to men, or ferviceable to fociety. He fpoke to all conditions, to both fexes, to every age.This amiable moralist descended, in his writings, to the most artlefs details, to the most ingenuous familiarities, to the firft ideas of a rural, a com mercial, and a civil life; to the dialogues of eld men and children; full at once of all the verdure and all the maturity of wisdom; in fhort, the pru dent leffons arifing from the expofition of thofe obfcure, happy, eafy virtues, which form fo many links in the chain of a good man's life, derived immense weight from that reputation for genius which he had acquired, by being one of the first naturalifts and greatest philofophers in the uni

verfe.

At one and the fame time, he governed nature in the heavens and in the hearts of men.

Amidt the tempefts of the atmosphere, he directed the thunder; amidst the forms of fociety, he directed the paffions. Think, Gentlemen, with what attentive docility, with what religious refpect, one must hear the voice of a fimple man, who preached up human happiness, when it was recol lected that it was the powerful voice of the fame man who regulated the lightning.

He electrified the confciences, in order to extract the defiuctive fire of vice, exactly in the fame manner as he cl &ified he heavens, in order peaceably to invite to the terrible fire

of the elements. He thus exercised (O power immense of wisdom and of genius!) two attributes of the Deity.

Figure to your own minds, this fage with the celestial phyfiognomy which he poffeffed, with that calm and auguft forehead, reuniting, in his own person, an authority over the natural and social world; does he not resemble a beneficent God defcended upon earth, in order to extinguish the wrath of heaven and teach virtue to mankind?

The leifure hours of Franklin were fo many acts of goodness, which, if they were not too numerous, would form the chief charm of this oration. His amufements confifted in experiments which refembled prodigies, and of which a fingle inflance will fuffice to give fome idea. He himself, in a letter to one of the moft learned Members of the Royal Society of London*, has prefented the defcription of a feftival, which he gave to his friends and the public upon the borders of the Schuylkil.

An electric fpark, without any other conductor than the water, ferved to light the volatile fpirit prepared to illuminate both banks of the river, at one and the fame moment. The vifible fhock of the electric matter, appeared, to the ravished eyes of the fpectators, to kill the game and wild fowl prepared for the treat; culinary inftruments turned and dreffed the viands by means of the heat, arifing from the ethereal flame, while the goblets as if filled by magic, became replenished with the choiceft wines of Europe.

In the mean time his guefts, compofed of the

* Mr. Collinson....

most learned men in Philadelphia, accompanied by a discharge of artillery from an electric battery, drank the healths of all the famous philofophers of France, of England, of Switzerland, of Holland of Italy, and of Germany, by turns, while the echoes arifing from the neighbouring fhores fpread abroad and multiplied thefe folemn falutations. The joyous acclamations of the people of a country formerly favage and deferted, but at prefent inhabited by numerous nations of new men, who have formed alliance between fcience and morality, reached to the skies.

You may eafily conceive, Gentlemen, what a mild, but fure afcendant, this fage, who infpired his citizens with a tafte for fuch noble pleasures, exercifed over their minds! Not a fingle mo ment did he lofe in the courfe of his whole life; not one of his thoughts but what tended to the public welfare; not one of his laborious or of his leifure hours which did not fay men, "It is thus "that existence becomes valuable, it is thus that "mankind become happy!

I have not as yet attempted to paint any thing more than the philofopher, who, by the force of his ideas, and the communication of his fentiments, bestowed a charm unknown before, and a new activity upon focial morality.

Franklin had formed men: He had conceived ftill more noble projects-he wished to create ci tizens. He had already completed the bafis, which is morality; he determined upon this to e levate the column of legiflation. It is now the legiflator whom I must exhibit, it is the electrician of nations that is about to begin his operations; it is he who compofed and completed the mot

charming model of liberty that was ever prefented to the univerfe; and it is to France, now become free, it is before her firft legiflature that I am ambitious of exhibiting this picture; it will awaken flaves, it will tranfport Frenchmen!

PART II.

"TRAVELLER, inform Sparta that we have died in obedience to her holy laws.

This infcription over the bodies of thofe who erifhed at Thermopylæ, is the most fuperb moument that was ever erected to the honour of Greece: It proves that antiquity recognized citiens in an angle of the world.

The city of Lacedemon, the only one which erits that appellation, on account of the feparaon of the three powers which organized its goernment (for the anarchy of Athens, and the war of ivic elements in Rome, prohibit them, altho' in other efpects immortal from enjoying this fingular hoour,) the city of Lacedemon was deftined to enure but a short time, for it had not humanity for is bafis. Mankind themfelves were not as yet cquainted with it. It was neceffary that whole ges fhould firft elapfe: and the Spartans, citizens. without being men, were to be annihilated by the orce of Nature, who does not long tolerate whatver contradicts her laws.

Methinks I now behold a more noble monunent erected between the old and the new world: It ifes out of the bofom of the Atlantic ocean; it