in vain that his wife and his friends besought him to relinquish what they deemed his chimerical and ruinous project. He borrowed more money, with which he repeated his experiments; and, when he had no more fuel wherewith to feed his furnaces, he cut down his chairs and tables for that. purpose. Still his success was inconsiderable. He was now actually obliged to give a person, who had assisted him, part of his clothes by way of remuneration, having nothing else left; and, with his wife and children starving before his eyes, and by their appearance silently reproaching him as the cause of their sufferings, he was at heart miserable enough. But he neither despaired, nor suffered his friends to know what he felt; preserving, in the midst of all his misery, a gay demeanour, and losing no opportunity of renewing his pursuit of the object which he all the while felt confident he should one day accomplish. And at last, after sixteen years of persevering exertion, his efforts were crowned with complete success, and his fortune was made. Palissy was, in all respects, one of the most extraordinary men of his time; in his moral character displaying a high-mindedness and commanding energy altogether in harmony with the reach and originality of conception by which his understanding was distinguished. Although a Protestant, he had escaped, through the royal favour, from the massacre of St. Bartholomew; but, having been soon after shut up in the Bastille, he was visited in his prison by the king, who told him, that if he did not comply with the established religion, he should be forced, however unwillingly, to leave him in the hands of his enemies. "Forced!" replied Palissy. "This is not to speak like a king; but they who force you cannot force me; I can die!" He never regained his liberty, but ended his life in the Bastille, in the ninetieth year of his age.

CHAPTER XIII.

Early Life of Franklin.

THE name we are now to mention is perhaps the most distinguished to be found in the annals of self-education. Of all those, at least, who, by their own efforts, and without any usurpation of the rights of others, have raised themselves to a high place in society, there is no one, as has been remarked, the close of whose history presents so great a contrast to its commencement as that of

NJAMIN FRANKLIN. It fortunately happens, too, in his case, that we are in possession of abundant information as to the methods by which he contrived to surmount the many disadvantages of his original condition; to raise himself from the lowest poverty and obscurity to affluence and distinction; and, above all, in the absence of instructors, and of the ordinary helps to the acquisition of knowledge, to enrich himself so plentifully with the treasures of literature and science, as not only to be enabled to derive from that source the chief happiness of his life, but to succeed in placing himself high among the most famous writers and philosophers of his time. It is in this latter point of view, chiefly, that at present we purpose to consider him; and we shall avail ourselves, as liberally as our limits will permit of the ample details, respecting the early part of his life especially, that have been given to the public, in order to present to the reader as full and distinct an account as possible of the successive steps of a progress so eminently worthy of being recorded, both from the interesting nature of the

story, and from its value as an example and lesson, perhaps the most instructive to be anywhere found, for all who have to be either the architects of their own fortunes, or their own guides in the pursuit of knowledge.

Franklin has himself told us the story of his early life inimitably well. The narrative is given in the form of a letter to his son; and does not appear to have been written originally with any view to publication. "From the poverty and obscurity," he says, "in which I was born, and in which I passed my earliest years, I have raised myself to a state of affluence, and some degree of celebrity in the world. As constant good fortune has accompanied me, even to an advanced period of life, my posterity will perhaps be desirous of learning the means which I employed, and which, thanks to Providence, so well succeeded with me. They may also deem them fit to be imitated, should any of them find themselves in similar circumstances." It is not many years this letter was, for the first time, given to the world by the grandson of the illustrious writer, only a small portion of it having previously appeared, and that merely a re-translation into English from a French version of the original manuscript which had been published at Paris.

since

Franklin was born at Boston, in North America, on the 17th of January, 1706; the youngest, with the exception of two daughters, of a family of seventeen children. His father, who had emigrated from England about twenty-four years before, followed the occupation of a soapboiler and tallow chandler, a business to which he had not been bred, and by which he seems with difficulty to have been able to support his numerous family. At first it was proposed to make Benjamin a clergyman; and he was accordingly, having before learned to read, put to