The unity of the British empire, in all its parts, was a favorite idea of his. He used to compare it to a beautiful China vase, which, if once broken, could never be put together again; and so great an admirer was he, at the time, of the British constitution, that he said he saw no inconvenience from its being extended over a great part of the globe. With these sentiments he left England; but when, on his arrival in America, he found the war begun, and that there was no receding, no man entered more warmly into the interests of what he then considered as his country, in opposition to that of Great Britain. Three of his letters to me, one written immediately on his landing, and published in the collection of his Miscellaneous Works, pp. 365, 552 and 555, will prove this.

By many persons Dr. Franklin is considered as having been a cold-hearted man, so callous to every feeling of human ity, that the prospect of all the horrors of a civil war could not affect him. This was far from being the case. A great part of the day, above mentioned, that we spent together, he was looking over a number of American newspapers, directing me what to extract from them for the English ones; and in reading them, he was frequently not able to proceed for the tears literally running down his cheeks. To strangers he was cold and reserved; but where he was intimate, no man in dulged in more pleasantry and good humor. By this he was the delight of a club, to which he alludes in one of the letters above referred to, called the Whigclub, that met at the London coffee-house, of which Dr. Price, Dr. Kippis, Mr. John Lee and others of the same stamp, were members.

Hoping that this vindication of Dr. Franklin will give pleasure to many of your readers, I shall proceed to relate some particulars relating to his behavior when Lord Loughborough, then Mr. Wedderburn, pronounced his violent invective against him at the privy-council, on his presenting the complaints of the province of Massachusetts (I think it was) against their governor. Some of the particulars may be thought amusing.

On the morning of the day on which the cause was to be heard, I met Mr. Burke in Parliament-street, accompanied by Dr. Douglas, afterwards bishop of

Carlisle; and, after introducing us to each other, as men of letters, he asked me whither I was going. I said I could tell him where I wished to go. He then asked me where that was. I said to the privycouncil, but that I was afraid I could not get admission. He then desired me to go along with him. Accordingly I did; but when we got into the anteroom we found it quite filled with persons as desirous of getting admittance as ourselves. Seeing this, I said we should never get through the crowd. He said, "Give me your arm; and locking it fast in his, he soon made his way to the door of the privycouncil. I then said, "Mr. Burke, you are an excellent leader;" he replied, "I wish other persons thought so too."

After waiting a short time, the door of the privy-council opened, and we entered the first; when Mr. Burke took his stand behind the first chair next to the president, and I behind that the next to his. When the business was opened, it was sufficiently evident, from the speech of Mr. Wedderburn, who was counsel for the governor, that the real object of the court was to insult Dr. Franklin. All this time he stood in a corner of the room, not far from me, without the least apparent emotion.

Mr. Dunning, who was the leading counsel on the part of the colony, was so hoarse that he could hardly make himself heard; and Mr. Lee, who was the second, spoke but feebly in reply; so that Mr. Wedderburn had a complete triumph. At the sallies of his sarcastic wit all the members of the council, the president himself (Lord Gower) not excepted, frequently laughed outright. No person belonging to the council behaved with decent gravity, except Lord North, who, coming late, took his stand behind the chair opposite to me.

When the business was over, Dr. Franklin, in going out, took me by the hand, in a manner that indicated some feeling, I soon followed him, and going through the ante-room, saw Mr. Wedderburn there surrounded with a circle of his friends and admirers. Being known to him, he stepped forward as if to speak to me; but I turned aside, and made what haste I could out of the place.

The next morning I break fasted with the doctor, when he said, He had never before been so sensible of the power of a

good conscience; for that, if he had not considered the thing for which he had been so much insulted as one of the best actions of his life, and what he should certainly do again in the same circumstances, he could not have supported it." He was accused of clandestinely procuring certain letters, containing complaints against the governor, and sending them to America with a view to excite their animosity against him, and thus to embroil the two countries. But he assured me that he did not even know that such letters existed till they were brought to him as agent for the colony, in order to be sent to his constituents; and the cover of the letters on which the direction had been written being lost, he only guessed at the person to whom they were addressed by the contents.

That Dr. Franklin, notwithstanding he did not show it at the time, was much impressed by the business of the privycouncil, appeared from this circumstance: when he attended there, he was dressed in a suit of Manchester velvet; and Silas Deane told me that, when they met at Paris to sign the treaty between France and America, he purposely put on that suit.

Hoping that this communication will be of some service to the memory of Dr. Franklin, and gratify his friends, I am, sir, yours, etc. J. PRIESTLEY. Monthly Magazine, Feb., 1803.

FROM THE "FLYING LEAVES.”

[Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi was born at Dusseldorf 1743, and died at Munich 1819, a German metaphysical philosopher, who occupied several distin

guished posts under the government of Dusseldorf, and, in 1804 became President of the Academy of Sciences at Munich. He published a great number of literary and philosophical works, in some of which he combated the doctrines of Kant. His principal works are, Letters on the Doctrines of Spinosa, Hume and Belief; or, Idealism and Realism, and Letter to Fichte. His complete works, in 6 vols., were published at Leipsic between 1812 and 1824.]

My aim is not to help the reader while away the time, but rather to aid those to whom, as to me, the time is already too fleeting.

I can live in harmony with every one who lives in harmony with himself.

What dost thou call a beautiful soul? Thou callest a beautiful soul one that is quick to perceive the good, that gives it due prominence and holds it immovably fast.

It is absurd for a man to say that he hates and despises men, but loves and honors Humanity. A general without a particular, a Humanity worthy of honor and love without men who are worthy of honor and love, is a fiction of the brain, a thing that has no existence.

It is the custom of virtue to note the failings of distinguished men not otherwise than with a certain timidity and shame. It is the custom of vice to cover impudence with the appellation of love of truth.

To lay aside all prejudices is to lay aside all principles. He who is destitute of principles is governed, theoretically and practically, by whims.

Man, according to Moses, was created last; all the varieties of irrational animals were created before him. This order is still repeated in each individual man. He follows first the animal, the coarser propensities, coarse, animal pleasure; but he is created for immortality, and can find the way to immortality. But he can also become more beastly than a beast, and use the means of immortality in such a way as to become more mortal,-as to draw upon himself sufferings and diseases from which the brute is free. He can "with the armor of light extend the kingdom of darkness and of barbarism. Herder, in his Aelteste Urkunde, remarks that Adam, after the Fall, clothed himself in the life of animals. Man is guided by propensities, and all his propensities belong to his nature. But the propensity which makes him man, which distinguishes him, is the true life-propensity proper to his species, the propensity to a higher life. Even in the mere faculty of perception, which may be regarded as opposed to the faculty of sensation, this propensity appears. For the faculty of perception, the power of projecting objects out of himself, of raising himself

above them in order to contemplate them, is objective, and is the foundation of the regal dignity of man. It strikes the first spark of a love which differs so widely from what we call lust that it is capable of resisting and overcoming that lust. The earnest observer finds everywhere, from first to last, the same economy. But the innermost essence of the purely human propensity, -as the proper seat of liberty, as the mystery of substance,-is inscrutable for us.

There is no one thing in the world for which we can conceive an interest and a love that shall endure forever. Therefore fidelity is required of us, and a firm intent which the soul must be able to create for itself. He who learns this acquires freedom; acquires something of that great property, the property of having life in himself, which is the true philosopher's

stone.

The secret of the moral sense and feelng is the secret of everlasting life, in contradistinction to our present existence, which is fleeting, however we may strive against it, and leads to death. In moral feeling there is a presentiment of eternity. I know nothing sublimer and profounder than the saying of the New Testament, Our life is hid in Christ (the God-man) with God." Unquestionably, our life, if there is any true life in us, is hidden deep within us. Nevertheless it commands, apodictically.' its own preservation; commands that we bring it forth to the light. Faith and experience, therefore, are the only way by which we can arrive at the knowledge of the truth. True, it is a mystic, and to brutalism altogether intolerable, way. We must be able to inflict pain upon ourselves if we would attain to virtue and honor. Courage, resolution, is, above all things, necessary to man.

What is it that we admire in a Bayard, a Montrose, a Ruyter, a Douglas, in the friends of Cimon, who offered themselves up at Tanagra? We admire this in them, that they did not doat on the body, but lived exclusively the life of the soul. They were not what accident would make of

1 Apodiktisch, equivalent to absolutely; from the Greek aлodɛiкvvμu, to demonstrate; also, to appoint, to require by law. Tr.

| them, but what they themselves had resolved to be. He to whom the law, which he is to follow, does not stand forth as a God, has only a dead letter which cannot possibly quicken him.

Every aptitude to an end is a virtue. The inquiry after the highest virtue is an inquiry after the highest end. The rank of the virtues must therefore be determined according to the rank of the ends. To discover the system of ends it is necessary to ascertain what is the destination of man, his highest and ultimate aim.

The wise man is known by the choice of the ends which he proposes to himself; the prudent man is known by the choice of the means by which he attains his ends, whether they be wise or unwise. But how are the ends themselves to be known? Is the choice of the wisest to decide? Then we cannot say, as we have just said, that the wise man is known by his ends. Semper idem velle atque idem nolle. But what is this one, and the same which is to be always willed? It is the glory of God.

It is agreeable to the dignity of man to hold his passions in subjection, to govern them. But the feeling of dignity does not consist in the governing as such, but in that whereby we govern, in the consciousness of a higher destination. Man knows a higher good; this it is that overcomes, not his will.

Every activity proposes to itself a passivity, every labor enjoyment. But every enjoyment presupposes a want; when that is satisfied, the enjoyment ends. All pleasure is necessarily transient.

We enjoy ourself, however, only in our work, in our doing, and our best enjoyment is our best doing.

Man imputes to himself the ability to be constant by his own proper force, and places his honor in that ability. A man of his word, and a man of honor are synonymous terms. He who can embrace a purpose and persist in it, who can act from a resolve, unsupported by present inclination, nay, even in opposition to present inclination, emotion, or passion, of him we say, "he has character, he is a man." We despise the man who is

always only what things, accidents, circumstances, make of him; the fickle, the inconstant, the wavering. We honor him who can resist objects and the impressions which they make upon him, who knows how to maintain his self in the face of them, who lets himself be instructed but not changed by them.

To believe in humanity, to trust a friend unconditionally, we call great and noble. Want of faith, doubt, suspicion, have something little, ignoble; they originate in fear. A noble and courageous mind then believes and confides. It believes and confides not because it is a good calculator; its faith, its confidence, is power of feeling, not a cold exercise of the understanding. On the contrary, this power is opposed to the understanding inasmuch as it raises itself above it.

When man abides in the creature, he sinks behind and before into nothing.

When feeling and sentiment vanish, words and ceremonies remain and make themselves important.

Where morals are, there reason reigns over sense. And, vice versa, where reason begins to obtain the ascendency over sense, there morals arise.

The first step in the corruption of morals is no longer to regard public opinion; the last step is the absence of public opinion. Every one does, then, what pleases him; to every one it seems right to follow his own lusts. Morals have ceased from the land.

Have not all virtues sprung up before they had either name or precept? The book of life must be written before an index can be affixed to it. Our moral philosophies are such indexes made after the book; and they are generally made by men who understand nothing of the book. Others, who also understand nothing of it, think that the index is the basis of the book, and the art of referring to it the true art of life. But they always refer to it for others, not for themselves.

Life is not a particular form of body, but the body is a particular form of life. The body relates to the soul as the word to the thought.

The essence of reason consists in selfperception. It returns into self. That which it perceives, so far as it is conditioned by sense, it calls nature. That which it perceives, so far as it is not conditioned by sense, it calls the Divine Being.

True enlightenment is that which teaches man that he is a law to himself. True culture is that which accustoms him to obey this law without regard to reward and punishment.

In an age in which the good and the true are considered as two different and often conflicting things, everything must conflict.