OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN; WITH SELECTIONS FROM HIS MISCELLANEOUS WORKS. BY JOHN STANLEY. ILLUSTRATED BY NEWTON FIELDING. "Seest thou a man diligent in his calling, he shall stand before kings, he shall not stand before mean men." PROVERBS OF SOLOMON. Eripuit cœlo fulmen, sceptrumque tyrannis." M. TURGOT. LONDON: PUBLISHED BY SIMPKIN, MARSHALL AND CO., STATIONERS' PREFACE. THE lives of great and useful men have been likened to the course of rivers. These often rise in the most obscure and desolate regions. A child might leap over their beginnings, while thorns and briars appear destined to obey their unregarded progress. But silently that slightest thing Shall demonstrate its living stream. The rivulet widens and deepens; it becomes the pride of the meadows, and the fertilizer of extensive districts; it arrives within the sweep of tides and the noisy turmoil of commerce; conveys prosperity to towns and cities; bears on its bosom the hopes and fortunes of millions, and at length reaches the ocean, the health and wealth of a country. The life of the illustrious man whose portrait, along with characteristic emblematic representations, forms the frontispiece of the present small volume-extending, as his career did, through nearly the whole of the eighteenth century,-realized this ancient metaphor in a most remarkable manner. He was at once the humble tradesman, the yet |