doing Good, were among his earliest studies. The style of the Spectator, with which he early became acquainted, delighted him. He gives an account of his exertions to imitate it, in his memoirs of himself. As he had failed entirely in arithmetic while at school, he now borrowed a little treatise, which he mastered without any assistance, and studied navigation. At the age of sixteen, he read Locke on the Understanding, the Port-Royal Logic, and Xenophon's Memora bilia. Happening to meet with a work which recommended vegetable diet, he determined to abstain from flesh; and we now find the philosophic printer and newspaper-carrier purchasing books with the little sums he was enabled to save by the frugality of his diet. From Shaftesbury and Collins he imbibed those skeptical notions which he is known to have held during a part of his life. His brother published a newspaper, which was the second that had as yet appeared in America. Franklin, having secretly written some pieces for it, had the satisfaction to find them well received; but, on its coming to the knowledge of his brother, he was severely lectured for his presumption, and treated with great harshness. One of the political articles in the journal having offended the general court of the colony, the publisher was imprisoned, and forbidden to continue it. To elude this prohibition, young Franklin was made the nominal editor, and his indentures were ostensibly cancelled. After the release of his brother he took advantage of this act to assert his freedom, and thus escape from the ill treatment which he suffered. His father's displeasure, his brother's enmity and the odium to which his skeptical notions subjected him, left him no alternative but a retreat to some other city. He therefore secretly embarked on board a small vessel bound to New-York, without means or recommendations; and, not finding employment there, he set out for Philadelphia, where he arrived on foot, with his pockets stuffed with shirts and stockings, a roll of bread under his arm and one dollar in his purse. "Who would have dreamed (says Brissot de Warville) that this poor wanderer would become one of the legislators of America, the ornament

of the new world, the pride of modern philosophy?" Here he obtained employment as a compositor, and, having attracted the notice of sir William Keith, the governor of Pennsylvania, was induced by his promises to go to England, for the purpose of purchasing types, to establish himself in business. On arriving in London (1725,) he found that the letters which had been delivered him, had no reference to him or his affairs; and he was once more in a strange place, without credit or acquaintance, and with little means. But he soon succeeded in getting business, and, although at one time guilty of some excesses, he afterwards became a model of industry and temperance, and even reformed his brother printers by his example and exhortation. While in London, he continued to devote his leisure hours to study, and wrote a small pamphlet himself, on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain. After a residence of 18 months in London, he returned to Philadelphia, in his twenty-first year, in the capacity of clerk to a dry-goods shop; but he soon returned to his trade, and in a short time formed an establishment in connexion with a person who supplied the necessary capital. They printed a newspaper, which was managed with much ability and acquired Franklin much reputation. It is impossible for us to trace all the steps of his progress to distinction. His industry, frugality, activity, intelligence; his plans for improving the condition of the province, for introducing better systems of education; his municipal services, made him an object of attention to the whole community. His advice was asked by the governor and council on all important occasions, and he was elected a member of the provincial assembly. He had begun to print his Poor Richard's Almanac in 1732; and the aphorisms which he prefixed to that for 1757 are well known. At the age of twenty-seven, he undertook to learn French, Italian and Spanish, and, after having made some progress in those languages he applied himself to the Latin. He was the founder of the university of Pennsylvania, and of the American philosophical society, and one of the chief promoters of the Pennsylvania hospital. In 1741 he began to print the General Magazine and Historical

Chronicle. In 1742, he invented the Franklin stove, for which he refused a patent, on the ground, that such inventions ought to be made at once subservient to the common good of mankind. We might continue this chronological notice of his services, it would show the remarkable versatility of his mind, but our space forbids us. Being in Boston in 1746, he saw, for the first time, some experiments in electricity, which, though imperfectly performed, were the origin of the most brilliant discoveries which had been made in natural philosophy. We cannot avoid being struck with the immediate practical application he made of his new discovery, in the invention of the lightning-rod. Franklin had ever shown himself a zealous advocate for the rights of the colonies, and, it having been determined to hold a general congress at Albany, to arrange a common plan of defence, he was named a deputy. On his route, he projected a scheme of union, embracing the regulation of all the great political interests of the colonies and the mother country. The Albany plan, as it was called, after it was adopted by the congress, proposed a general government for the provinces, to be administered by a president appointed by the crown, and a grand council, chosen by the provincial assemblies; the council was to lay taxes for all the common exigencies. The plan, though unanimously sanctioned by the congress, was rejected by the board of trade, as savoring too much of the democratic, and by the assemblies, as having too much of prerogative in it. In 1751, he was appointed deputy postmaster-general, and, in this capacity, advanced large sums of his own money to General Braddock, the result of whose expedition he foresaw, and in regard to which he made some fruitless suggestions to that general. After the defeat of Braddock, he introduced a bill for establishing a volunteer militia; and having received a commission as a commander, he raised a corps of 560 men, and went through a laborious campaign.

(To be continued.)

Folly is a bad quality, but never to endure it in others, is the greatest of follies.

CABINET OF NATURE.

IMMENSE QUANTITY OF MATTER IN THE UNIVERSE; Or, Illustrations of the Omnipotence of the Deity.

(Continued from page 134.)

In the next place, the rapid motions of the great bodies of the universe, no less than their magnitudes, display the Infinite Power of the Creator.

We can acquire accurate ideas of the relative velocities of moving bodies, only by comparing the motions with which we are familiar, with one another, and with those which lie beyond the general range of our minute inspection. We can acquire a pretty accurate conception of the velocity of a ship, impelled by the wind-of a steamboat-of a race horse-of a bird darting through the air-of an arrow flying from a bow-and of the clouds when impelled by a stormy wind. The velocity of a ship is from 8 to 12 miles an hour,-of a race horse, from 20 to 30 miles-of a bird, say from 50 to 60 miles, and of the clouds, in a violent hurricane, from 80 to 100 miles an hour. The motion of a ball from a loaded cannon is incomparably swifter than any of the motions now stated; but of the velocity of such a body we have a less accurate idea; because, its rapidity being so great, we cannot trace it distinctly by the eye, through its whole range, from the mouth of the cannon to the object against which it is impelled. By experiments, it has been found, that its rate of motion is from 480 to 800 miles in an hour, but it is retarded every moment, by the resistance of the air and the attraction of the earth. This velocity, however, great as it is, bears no sensible proportion to the rate of motion which is found That such enormous masses among the celestial orbs. of matter should move at all, is wonderful; but when we consider the amazing velocity with which they are impelled, we are lost in astonishment. The planet Jupiter, in describing his circuit round the sun, moves at the rate of 29,000 miles an hour. The planet Venus, one of the nearest and most brilliant of the celestial bodies, and about the same size as the earth, is found to move through the spaces of the firmament at the rate of 76,000 miles an hour; and the planet

Mercury, with a velocity of no less than 105,000 miles an hour, or 1750 miles in a minute-a motion two hundred times swifter than that of a cannon ball.

These velocities will appear still more astonishing, if we consider the magnitude of the bodies which are thus impelled, and the immense forces which are requisite to carry them along in their courses. However rapidly a ball flies from the mouth of a cannon, it is the flight of a body only a few inches in diameter; but one of the bodies, whose motion has been just now stated, is eighty-nine thousand miles in diameter, and would comprehend, within its vast circumference. more than a thousand globes as large as the earth. Could we contemplate such motions, from a fixed point, at the distance of only a few hundreds of miles from the bodies thus impelled-it would raise our admiration to its highest pitch, it would overwhelm all our faculties, and, in our present state would produce an impression of awe, and even of terror, beyond the power of language to express. The earth contains a mass of matter equal in weight to at least 2,200,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons, supposing its mean density to be only about 2 times greater than water. To move this ponderous mass a single inch beyond its position, were it fixed in a quiescent state, would require a mechanical force almost beyond the power of numbers to express. The physical force of all the myriads of intelligences within the bounds of the planetary system, though their powers were far superior to those of man, would be altogether inadequate to the production of such a motion. How much more must be the force requisite to impel it with a velocity one hundred and forty times swifter than a cannon ball, or 68,000 miles an hour, the actual rate of its motion, in its course round the sun! But whatever degree of mechanical power would be requisite to produce such a stupendous effect, it would require a force one hundred and fifty times greater to impel the planet Jupiter, in his actual course, through the heavens! Even the planet Saturn, one of the slowest moving bodies of our system, a globe 900 times