Who shall decide when doctors disagree,

And soundest casuists doubt like you and me?

"Tis not enough no harshness gives offense,
The sound must seem an echo to the sense:
Soft is the strain when Zephyr gently blows,
And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows;
But when loud surges lash the sounding shore,

The hoarse, rough verse should like the torrent roar.
When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw,
The line too labors, and the words move slow:
Not so when swift Camilla scours the plain,

Flies o'er the unbending corn, and skims along the main.

Know, then, thyself-presume not God to scan:
The proper study of mankind is man.

Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?

By foreign hands thy dying eyes were closed,
By foreign hands thy decent limbs composed,
By foreign hands thy humble grave adorned,
By strangers honored, and by strangers mourned!
Yet shall thy grave with rising flowers be dressed,
And the green turf lie lightly on thy breast:
There shall the morn her earliest tears bestow;
There the first roses of the year shall blow;
While angels with their silver wings o'ershade
The ground now sacred by thy relics made.

For forms of government let fools contest;
Whate'er is best administered is best :
For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight;
His can't be wrong whose life is in the right:
In faith and hope the world will disagree,
But all mankind's concern is charity:

All must be false that thwart this one great end
And all of God that bless mankind or mend.

Hope springs eternal in the human breast:
Man never is, but always to be blest.
The soul, uneasy and confined, from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.
Lo! the poor Indian, whose untutored mind
Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind;
His soul proud science never taught to stray
Far as the solar walk or milky-way;

Yet simple nature to his hope has given
Behind the cloud-topped hill a humbler heaven;
Some safer world in depth of woods embraced,
Some happier island in the watery waste,

Where slaves once more their native land behold,
No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold.
To be, contents his natural desire;

He asks no angel's wing, no seraph's fire;
But thinks, admitted to that equal sky,
His faithful dog shall bear him company.

That mercy I to others show,
That mercy show to me.1

1 "I have often wondered," says wrote The Dunciad should have Cowper, "that the same poet who written these lines."

Ir is no wonder that the colonial period of our country's history was one of comparative literary barrenness. Our forefathers were too busily engaged in subduing the wilderness, and in laying the foundations of states, to occupy themselves much with writing books.

Accordingly it was to the mother-country that they looked for intellectual food; and as regards learning, culture, art, and literature, the six generations of colonists were in a state of almost absolute dependence on England. The books and pamphlets of a political nature that came from the press were elicited by local causes, and possessed but transient interest; while the few sallies in "belles-lettres" were feeble imitations of the English poets and essayists of the eighteenth century.

In the midst of this provincial dependence and intellectual sterility stands out in sharp relief the luminous figure of Franklin,-the first truly great original literary man of America, the first American in whom the inarticulate genius of our country found prophetic voice.

The father of this illustrious man, about the year 1685, emigrated from Old England to New England, and established himself in Boston as a tallow-chandler and soap-boiler. He lived in a little house in Milk Street, opposite the Old South Church; and here was

born to him his fifteenth child and youngest son. Taking the new-born in his arms, Josiah Franklin carried him to the church across the street, and had him baptized Benjamin. The day of his birth and baptism was January 17, 1706. At this time Queer Anne sat on the throne of England, Pope was a sickly dwarf of nineteen, Addison had not yet written his Spectator, and the father of George Washington was a Virginia lad of ten.

In his delightful Autobiography, Franklin has told us in the most charming manner the story of his youthful life. When eight years old he was sent to the grammar school, but straitened circumstances compelled his early withdrawal; and at the age of ten he was employed in "cutting wicks for the candles, filling the dipping-mold," etc. This was so distasteful to Benja min, that he began to talk of going to sea. To prevent this, his father bound the lad apprentice to his elder brother James, a printer. During the five years of his apprenticeship with his brother, young Franklin was a diligent reader of all the books he could lay his hands on. His method of study, and to what advantage he turned his reading, will be seen in the extract from the Autobiography.

Franklin's brother was a man of sharp temper, and he frequently beat and otherwise harshly treated Benjamin. The result was that after five years his apprenticeship became unendurable, and he determined to run away and seek his fortune. First he went to New York; but, disappointed in getting work there, he continued his travels, afoot and by sloop, to Philadelphia,

where he arrived at nine o'clock on a Sunday morning, a friendless lad, his "whole stock of cash," as he tells us, "consisting of a Dutch dollar and about a shilling in copper." Buying three penny rolls, he ate one as he walked up the street, with the others under his arms, and his pockets stuffed with stockings and shirts. "Thus," says Franklin, "I went up Market Street, passing by the door of Mr. Read, my future wife's father; when she, standing at the door, saw me, and thought I made, as I certainly did, a most awkward, ridiculous appearance."

In Philadelphia, Franklin obtained employment as journeyman in one of the only two printing-offices then in that town. It was not long, however, before he was able to start an office of his own; and he soon enlarged his business by publishing in 1736 a bi-weekly paper, "The Philadelphia Gazette," which young Franklin edited with great ability, and which, as he tells us, "soon proved extremely profitable." In this same year he took to wife his youthful sweetheart Miss Read. She proved to be a sensible woman and a devoted wife, truly a helpmeet to him. Franklin's numerous letters to her during the many years he passed in England showed that his affection ripened with his years.

His great

Franklin soon became a man of mark. intelligence and industry, his ingenuity in devising better systems of economy, education, and improvement, now establishing a circulating library, now publishing a popular pamphlet, and presently also hist valuable municipal services, — rapidly won for him