sense of the many blessings he had received from the Supreme Being, who had raised him from small and low beginnings to such high rank and consideration among men, and made no doubt but his present afflictions were kindly intended to wean him from a world in which he was no longer fit to act the part assigned him. He latterly sank into a calm lethargic state; and, on the 17th April 1790, about eleven o'clock at night, he quietly expired. He was then aged exactly eighty-four years and three months. The following epitaph, written by himself many years previous to his death, was inscribed on his tombstone :

"The body of BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, Printer [like the cover of an old book, its contents torn out, and stript of its lettering and gilding], lies here food for worms; yet the work itself shall not be lost, for it will (as he believed) appear once more in a new and more beautiful edition, corrected and amended by THE AUTHOR."

In looking back on Franklin's career, it is evident that the principal feature in his character was worldly prudence_not in the usual and selfish acceptation of the term, but that prudence, founded on true wisdom, which dictates the practice of honesty, industry, frugality, temperancein short, all those qualities which may be classified under the name of "moral virtues," as being the only certain means of obtaining distinction, respect, independence, and mental cheerfulness. There is no other writer who inculcates lessons of practical wisdom in a more agreeable and popular manner, and we much regret that the limits of this work prevent our giving many extracts illustrative of this quality. His whole conduct and writings, indeed, present the somewhat singular union of great genius with practical good sense, and of singular worldly shrewdness, with the loftiest integrity of principle. The greatest worldly honours and few have attained higher-could not for a moment make him forget or deviate from the principles with which he started in life. Ever keeping before his mind his own origin and rise, he justly considered every man to be originally on a par in as far as regarded real intrinsic worth; and, equally by precept and example, contributed more, perhaps, than any individual who ever existed, to breaking down those invidious bars to eminence and success in life which the conventional habits and artificial feelings of society had theretofore interposed to the elevation of those unblessed by birth and fortune.

DANIEL DE FOE.

DANIEL DE FOE, the author of the celebrated fictitious narrative, Robinson Crusoe, was born in 1661, in the parish of St Giles, Cripplegate, in the city of London. His name was properly Foe, and he only added the De when grown up to manhood. His father was James Foe, a respectable butcher, of dissenting principles; and his grandfather, whose younger son his father is supposed to have been, was a yeoman of the same name, farming a small estate of his own at Elton, in Northamptonshire, and possessing the opposite principles of a Cavalier and High-churchman.

By his father, young De Foe was educated with the view of his becoming a dissenting clergyman: his chief preceptor was Mr Charles Moreton, who kept a dissenting academy at Newington Green, and subsequently emigrated to America. Whether from an unsettled disposition, or his father's inability to supply the necessary expenses, he never finished his education as a minister; but he nevertheless had acquired a knowledge at the academy of five different languages, of mathematics, natural philosophy, logic, geography, and history. His learning, however, is very plausibly sup posed to have been superficial, and in which character it is spoken of by his contemporary, the poet Gay. The glory of De Foe was not destined, however, to arise from any modification of existing knowledge, but from the nervous common sense, and the power of describing imaginary beings under all the semblance of reality, with which he was endowed by na

ture.

The dissenting principles, which consisted in a denial of certain forms and powers assumed by the church of England, together with some dim but aspiring views respecting civil liberty, took such a fast hold of the mind of De Foe, that they never left him from the beginning to the end of his career. Entering into life at the end of the reign of Charles II., when both civil and religious tyranny were coming to a height, he could hardly fail, with such a mind and temperament as he possessed, to throw himself at once into the turmoil of polemical warfare. Accordingly, at the age of twenty-one, he wrote a satire upon the church clergy, styled "Speculum Crape-Gownorum. When only three years older, he took a more practical step against the church, by joining the rebellion of the Duke of Monmouth, which was very speedily put down. De Foe narrowly escaped being taken prisoner, and return

ing to London, eluded the wide-sweeping and bloody revenge with which the government visited the actors in that unfortunate movement. He soon after embarked in business as a sort of agent between the London hosiers and the country manufacturers, and, being free by birth, took up his living as a citizen of London. This happened in 1687-8, on the eve of the revolution, a crisis when neither stockings nor citizenship could keep De Foe from pen and ink; and accordingly he joined the numerous assailants of the tottering power of King James. Of the revolution, he was not only a supporter-he hailed it with enthusiastic joy, and ever after observed the 4th of November, the anniversary of the landing of the Prince of Orange, as a holiday. In October 1689, when King William and Queen Mary paid their first ceremonial visit to Guildhall, Daniel De Foe appeared conspicuously in the procession as one of a royal regiment of volunteer horse, made up of the chief citizens (chiefly dissenters), and who, gallantly mounted and richly accoutred, made a very great show. He admired the character of King William to a degree of enthusiasm, and, unlike the generality of the English people, retained a warmly grateful sense of his services to British liberty and freedom of conscience. As an exposure of the absurd cry that the king was a foreigner, De Foe wrote his poetical satire, entitled "the True-born Englishman,” a piece which, though deficient in polish, is a masterpiece of good sense and just reflection, and shows a thorough knowledge both of English history and of the English character. It is, indeed, a complete and unanswerable exposure of the pretence set up by the English to a purer and loftier origin than all the rest of the world, instead of their being a mixed race from all parts of Europe, settling down into one common name and people. King Wil liam was so much gratified by this publication as to extend his personal friendship to the author, who was often closeted with him during the latter part of his majesty's life. His pen, however, added more to his celebrity than his, fortunes. Having engaged in the Portuguese and Spanish trade, he lost a vessel by shipwreck, and, from one cause or other, miscarried in business of two or three descriptions. Like most falling men, he committed some errors in attempting to retrieve his affairs. They could not, however, have been very unpardonable, as he was not made bankrupt, and his creditors agreed to take his own personal security for the composition. What is still more to his credit, after being fully discharged, he continued to pay to the extent of his power, to the amount of some thousand pounds. The fact is equally characteristic, that, while in this state of depression, he occupied himself in projecting

ways and means for the government, which obtained him a small place and other countenance, and restored him to com❤ parative competence.

The death of King William in 1701 made matters much for the worse with De Foe. Under Queen Anne, the high church system waxed more and more furious and intolerant, till, in the end, a university preacher was able, with impunity, to lead an infatuated mob through the streets of London, pulling down the dissenters' places of worship, burning their private dwellings, and making it unsafe for one of that profession to be seen abroad. The established clergy, in general, cherished the most embittered feelings towards the dissenters, and desired to see them subjected to very severe penalties. De Foe marked, with an exact eye, the extravagant notions which the heat of the time had engendered in the minds of these men, and under the title of "The Shortest Way with the Dissenters," brought out a pamphlet, in which he caricatured the whole under a semblance of the most serious earnest-insomuch that, at first, the pamphlet was highly extolled by the clergy as a more than usually uncompromising demonstration of their favourite views.

The

When it was at length discovered that the author was only burlesquing the sentiments of the clergy, he was immediately denounced as one of the most profligate of men; nor were even his own brethren, the dissenters, so sure of the propriety or expediency of his satire as to stand up in his defence. A prosecution for seditious libel, in which the accusers hypocritically overlooked the real, as opposed to the apparent tendency of the pamphlet, was instituted against him. He was moreover cheated into a plea of guilty, by the expectation of a pardon, when, to the eternal disgrace of justice, a sentence followed, inflicting a triple appearance in the pillory, a fine of two hundred merks, imprisonment during the queen's pleasure, and sureties for good behaviour for seven years. firmness of character of this extraordinary man was strikingly exemplified by the fortitude with which he endured the ignominy of the first part of his sentence, and the total ruin of his affairs (and at the time he possessed a wife and six children), which followed a prosecution so merciless. Instead of yielding to despondency, his elastic mind fell back upon its resources, and, besides the immediate production of his caustic satire, termed "A Hymn to the Pillory," during his imprisonment, which lasted nearly two years, he commenced his celebrated journal, "The Review;" published a collection of his works; kept up a pamphleteering warfare on various public topics with all his usual activity; and in no respect showed any

mental yielding to his fallen fortunes. Pope, in his Dunciad, has made an ungenerous allusion to the circumstances:

"See where on high stands unabashed De Foe."

But without any wish to depreciate the merit of this poet, it may be said that De Foe had ten thousand times more real glory in enduring the honourable dishonour of the pillory for an effort in behalf of humanity and toleration, than what the author of the Rape of the Lock had in any single transaction of his capricious life.

It is a remarkable fact that De Foe was condemned for patriotic conduct under a Whig ministry, and that he was released and consoled by a Tory one. On the accession of Harley and Bolingbroke to power, the former interceded for and obtained his liberation, and prevailed upon the queen to supply the money for his fine and expenses. This can scarcely be called a disinterested proceeding, as the object evidently was to buy off a writer of whom the new cabinet had some reason to stand in dread. De Foe accepted from Harley the charge of acting as a confidential agent, at Edinburgh, in the transactions of the Union between Scotland and England-a duty which he is allowed to have discharged with activity and zeal, and chronicled in his "History of the Union" with much ability. It does not appear that he either employed his pen, or gave his personal services, in behalf of any of the expressly Tory measures of this celebrated cabinet; he only abstained from writing against it, which was the least that his obligations to Harley would allow him to do. He had, besides, another and equally cogent reason for doing little at this time in behalf of the popular cause. The popular cause was hardly true to itself. The mass of the community were led away by the insane cry of " the church is in danger," from the pursuit of their own proper objects, into a defence of others with which they had nothing to do. De Foe, whose mind went always in the van of the age, suffered more from the party which he led than from that which he opposed; so that it could hardly be wondered at if he at last drew off from active combat, and contented himself with merely cherishing in his own bosom those abstract principles which he considered his fellows not yet fitted to realise. Having published a pamphlet, in which he ironically urged the people to bring in the Pretender by a caricatured use of all the Jacobite arguments, he was prosecuted for it by a co-patriot, named William Benson, who, being utterly unable to see the real drift of the jeu d'esprit, conceived that the author was in league with the disinherited Stuart, and endeavoured to bring him to trial accordingly for high