the collection and publication of these curt, wise comments upon life and the world is described in the "Autobiography," in a passage here printed as an introductory note to the " Almanac." Franklin's account of the contemporary influence of "Poor Richard" is no whit exaggerated. Mr. John T. Morse, Jr., one of Franklin's recent biographers, says: Poor Richard' was the revered and popular schoolmaster of a young nation during its period of tutelage. His teachings are among the powerful forces which have gone to shaping the habits of Americans. His terse and picturesque bits of the wisdom and the virtue of this world are familiar in our mouths to-day; they moulded our great-grandparents and their children; they have informed our popular traditions ; they still influence our actions, guide our ways of thinking, and establish our points of view, with the constant control of acquired habits which we little suspect."

The shrewd wit that was the salt of the 'Almanac" characterizes also Franklin's essays and miscellaneous writings. They are models of an effective popular style that loses no dignity in becoming colloquial. Carelessly as Franklin often wrote, his acquaintance with the best English prose and a happy instinct that was quite his own kept him as far from affectation as from dulness. His story of "The Whistle" is perhaps the most famous of these compositions, but they are all delightful.

Nothing could be more perfect of its kind than Franklin's speech in the Federal Convention of 1787, in favor of opening its daily sessions with prayer. It is decorous, eloquent, irreproachable. Yet it seems to have convinced but very few members of the Convention, and in truth Franklin's real attitude toward that other world whose assistance he then entreated is difficult to determine with any certainty. He was not "spiritually-minded”—as his friend Whitefield would have understood that phrase. Yet he sought virtue persistently, and in spite of early "errata" the printer's life was governed by noble impulses and guided to worthy ends. One of the ablest men of his century, he was also one of the most useful.

Readers of this little volume will miss the story of Franklin the patriot, the diplomatist, the statesman; they will have merely a glimpse of the scientist; but the temper of the man is revealed upon every page. It is betrayed in his casual letters: in the lines about "prudential algebra" to Dr. Priestley; in the familiar, "You are my enemy, and I am Yours," to his friend Strahan the printer; in the admiring, generous sentences addressed to George Washington; in the account of his peaceful closing years written to his old companion, the Bishop of St. Asaph's. Franklin lived happily and died content, assured of the respect and gratitude of mankind. Take one thing with another," he wrote to his sister, and the world is a pretty

good sort of a world, and it is our duty to make the best of it and be thankful." That is a more cheery philosophy than modern men of letters have uniformly possessed, yet it remains to be proved that pessimism is a valuable equipment for the pursuit of literature. We have had plenty of gloomy, stormy geniuses since Franklin's day, but we have had very few men who could write a better page of English prose. BLISS PERRY.