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We shall never envy the honors, which wit and learning obtain in any other cause, if we can be numbered among the writers who have given ardor to virtue and confidence to truth. Dr. Johnson.

BIOGRAPHY.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, LL. D.

See on yon dark'ning height bold Franklin tread,
Heav'n's awful thunders rolling o'er his head;
Convolving clouds the billowy skies deform,
And forky flames emblaze the black'ning storm.
See the descending stream around him burn,
Glance on his rod, and with its guidance turn;
He bids conflicting heav'ns their blast expire,
Curbs the fierce blaze, and holds th' imprison'd fire.
No more, when folding storms the vault o'erspread,
The livid glare shall strike thy race with dread;
Nor towers nor temples, shuddering with the sound,
Sink in the flames, and spread destruction round.
His daring toils, the threat'ning blasts that wait,
Shall teach mankind to ward the bolts of fate;
The pointed steel o'er-top the ascending spire,
And lead, o'er trembling walls, the harmless fire;
In his glad fame while distant worlds rejoice,

Far as the lightnings shine, or thunders raise their voice.

Barlow's Columbiad.

Ir our biography this month have not the charm of novelty to recommend it, it may at least aspire to the praise of having for its subject one of the brightest luminaries in that constellation of sages which guided our nation through the perils of revolution. We glory in the contemplation of one, who, bred to a mechanic art, has imparted a kind of borrowed lustre to all its succeeding professors-one, to use the language of our lamented PAINE,

Whose Promethean line

Drew a spark from the clouds and made printing divine.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN was born in Boston, Massachusetts, January 17th, 1706. His father Josiah, who was a native of

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Nottinghamshire, England, finding himself subjected to various hardships, on account of his attachment to the religious opinions of the Non-conformists, quitted his native country together with his wife and three children, and, about the year 1682, found an asylum from persecution in New-England. The trade, to which he had been brought up, was that of dyer; but, finding it very unprofitable in this country, he soon after his arrival took up that of a tallow chandler. By his first wife he had seven children; and by the second ten, of whom Benjamin, the subject of this article, was the eighth.

In the account which Dr. Franklin gives of his father, he represents him as a pious, prudent, and ingenious man, endowed with a good mechanical genius, and capable, on occasion, of using the tools of other workmen with great dexterity. He also possessed a sound understanding and solid judgement, and was universally esteemed by his neighbors as a man of great probity and discernment. His mother was a virtuous and discreet woman, who united her best endeavors with her husband, to improve and form the minds of their children, and to make them useful and virtuous members of society. Such were the parents, such the instructers, to whom the world was indebted for this benefactor of the human race; for from them, he, in his younger years, imbibed those principles of moral rectitude, and that aversion from arbitrary power, for which, through the whole of a long life, he afterwards became so eminently conspicuous.

Young Franklin, having been early designed for the ministry, was, at the age of eight years, sent to the grammarschool of Boston, from which, notwithstanding his uncommon progress in the Latin language, he was removed at the end of one year to a school for writing and arithmetic; hisfather considering, that, with his large family, he could ill afford the expenses of a liberal education, and that persons so educated were often but poorly provided for.

At the age of ten, Franklin was taken from school, and, for some time, employed by his father, to assist him in his business. The trade of a tallow chandler was, however, the

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