ers whom America has yet produced were born in
New England at the beginning of the eighteenth century. The theorists
who would trace all our characteristics to inheritance from some remote
ancestor might see in Jonathan Edwards and Benjamin Franklin normal
representatives of the two types from which the genuine Yankee is
derived. Though blended in various proportions, and though one may exist
almost to the exclusion of the other, an element of shrewd mother-wit
and an element of transcendental enthusiasm are to be detected in all
who boast a descent from the pilgrim fathers. Franklin, born in 1706,
represents in its fullest development the more earthly side of this
compound. A thoroughbred utilitarian, full of sagacity, and carrying
into all regions of thought that strange ingenuity which makes an
American the handiest of all human beings, Franklin is best embodied in
his own poor Richard. Honesty is the best policy: many a little makes a
mickle: the second vice is lying, the first is running in debt; and--

'Get what you can, and what you get hold;
'Tis the stone that will turn all your lead into gold.'

These and a string of similar maxims are the pith of Franklin's message
to the world. Franklin, however, was not merely a man in whom the
practical intelligence was developed in a very remarkable degree, but
was fortunate in coming upon a crisis admirably suited to his abilities,
and in being generally in harmony with the spirit of his age. He
succeeded, as we know, in snatching lightning from the heavens, and the
sceptre from tyrants; and had his reward in the shape of much
contemporary homage from French philosophers, and lasting renown amongst
his countrymen. Meanwhile, Jonathan Edwards, his senior by three years,
had the fate common to men who are unfitted for the struggles of daily
life, and whose philosophy does not harmonise with the dominant current
of the time. A speculative recluse, with little faculty of literary
expression, and given to utter opinions shocking to the popular mind, he
excited little attention during his lifetime, except amongst the sharers
of his own religious persuasions; and, when noticed after his death, the
praise of his intellectual acuteness has generally been accompanied with
an expression of abhorrence for his supposed moral obtuseness. Mr.
Lecky, for example, whilst speaking of Edwards as 'probably the ablest
defender of Calvinism,' mentions his treatise on Original Sin as