rote in grand balanced phrases, but his
conversation was good, lusty, off-hand familiar talk. He used very often
to have it all his own way. If he came back to us we must remember that
to treat him fairly we must suppose him on a level with the knowledge of
our own time. But that knowledge is more specialized, a great deal, than
knowledge was in his day. Men cannot talk about things they have seen
from the outside with the same magisterial authority the talking dynasty
pretended to. The sturdy old moralist felt grand enough, no doubt, when
he said, "He that is growing great and happy by electrifying a bottle
wonders how the world can be engaged by trifling prattle about war or
peace." Benjamin Franklin was one of these idlers who were electrifying
bottles, but he also found time to engage in the trifling prattle about
war and peace going on in those times. The talking Doctor hits him very
hard in "Taxation no Tyranny": "Those who wrote the Address (of the
American Congress in 1775), though they have shown no great extent or
profundity of mind, are yet probably wiser than to believe it: but they
have been taught by some master of mischief how to put in motion the
engine of political electricity; to attract by the sounds of Liberty and
Property, to repel by those of Popery and Slavery; and to give the great
stroke by the name of Boston." The talking dynasty has always been hard
upon us Americans. King Samuel II. says: "It is, I believe, a fact
verified beyond doubt, that some years ago it was impossible to obtain a
copy of the Newgate Calendar, as they had all been bought up by the
Americans, whether to suppress the blazon of their forefathers or to
assist in their genealogical researches I could never learn
satisfactorily." As for King Thomas, the last of the monological
succession, he made such a piece of work with his prophecies and his
sarcasms about our little trouble with some of the Southern States, that
we came rather to pity him for his whims and crotchets than to get angry
with him for calling us bores and other unamiable names.

I do not think we believe things because considerable people say them, on
personal authority, that is, as intelligent listeners very commonly did a
century ago. The newspapers have lied that belief out of us. Any man
who has a pretty gift of talk may hold his company a little while when
there is nothing better stirring. Every now and then a man who may be
dull enough prevailin