ine and Fall of Empires,' the decline and fall
of the British Empire shall come to be his subject, as will probably
soon be the case, Dr. Franklin would be happy to furnish him with
ample materials, which are in his possession."[28]

[Footnote 28: This anecdote has had a wide circulation in the
newspapers. Mr. William Cobbett inserts it in his "Works," with the
following comment, characteristic of the spirit of most of the higher
class of Englishmen, in those days:

"Whether this anecdote record a truth or not I shall not pretend to
say. But it must be confessed, that the expressions imputed to the two
personages were strictly in character. In Gibbon, we see the faithful
subject, and the man of candor and honor. In Franklin the treacherous
and malicious old Zanga, of Boston."--_Works of William Cobbett. Vol.
vii, p. 244._]

Gibbon was a Tory. He supported Lord North in all his measures. The
government rewarded him with a pension of eight hundred pounds a year.
This was equivalent to considerable more than four thousand dollars
at the present time. Franklin was received, in Paris, by the whole
population, court and _canaille_, with enthusiasm which that excitable
capital had rarely witnessed. The most humble of the population were
familiar with the pithy sayings of Poor Richard. The _savants_
admitted their obligations to him, for the solution of some of the
most difficult problems of philosophy. The fashionable world
were delighted with his urbanity; and in his society found rare
and unequalled pleasure. The republicans regarded him as the
personification of a free government; and even the nobles and the
ministry were cheered by the hope that, with his aid, haughty England
could be weakened and humbled, and that thus a new era of commercial
prosperity was about to dawn upon France.

John Adams was not popular in Paris. He was a man of great abilities,
of irreproachable character, and was animated by as pure principles of
patriotism as ever glowed in a human bosom. But he was a genuine
Puritan, inheriting the virtues and the foibles of the best of that
class. Though not wanting in magnanimity, he could not fail from being
disturbed, by the caresses with which Franklin was ever greeted,
contrasted with the cold and respectful courtesy with which he was
received. It was always the same, in the Court, in the saloons, and on
the Boulevards. In Mr. Adams' diary, written some years later, we find
the following insertion,