I would assume a cheerful countenance,
enjoy the scene around me, and observe it as coolly as an astronomer
contemplates the stars. Inscriptions of _Fructus Belli_ were seen on the
ceiling and all about the walls of the room, among paintings of the
trophies of war; probably done by the order of Louis XIV., who confessed
in his dying hour, as his successor and exemplar Napoleon will probably
do, that he had been too fond of war. The king was the royal carver for
himself and all his family. His majesty ate like a king, and made a
royal supper of solid beef, and other things in proportion. The queen
took a large spoonful of soup, and displayed her fine person and
graceful manners, in alternately looking at the company in various parts
of the hall, and ordering several kinds of seasoning to be brought to
her, by which she fitted her supper to her taste.]

THE CHARACTER OF FRANKLIN

From Letter to the Boston Patriot, May 15th, 1811

Franklin had a great genius, original, sagacious, and inventive, capable
of discoveries in science no less than of improvements in the fine arts
and the mechanic arts. He had a vast imagination, equal to the
comprehension of the greatest objects, and capable of a cool and steady
comprehension of them. He had wit at will. He had humor that when he
pleased was delicate and delightful. He had a satire that was
good-natured or caustic, Horace or Juvenal, Swift or Rabelais, at his
pleasure. He had talents for irony, allegory, and fable, that he could
adapt with great skill to the promotion of moral and political truth. He
was master of that infantine simplicity which the French call _naivete_
which never fails to charm in Phaedrus and La Fontaine, from the cradle
to the grave. Had he been blessed with the same advantages of scholastic
education in his early youth, and pursued a course of studies as
unembarrassed with occupations of public and private life as Sir Isaac
Newton, he might have emulated the first philosopher. Although I am not
ignorant that most of his positions and hypotheses have been
controverted, I cannot but think he has added much to the mass of
natural knowledge, and contributed largely to the progress of the human
mind, both by his own writings and by the controversies and experiments
he has excited in all parts of Europe. He had abilities for
investigating statistical questions, and in some parts of his life has
written pamphlets and essays upon public topics with great i