y will, for the second death shall have no
power to do them harm. Praise ye and bless the Lord, and give thanks
to him and serve him with great humility.

[The last stanza, in praise of death, was added to the poem
on the day St. Francis left the world, October 4th, 1225.]

Translation of Maurice Francis Egan.

[Illustration: B. FRANKLIN.]

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

(1706-1790)

BY JOHN BIGELOW

The youngest son of the seventeen children of a Boston tallow-chandler
named Franklin was born a subject of Queen Anne of England, on the 6th
of January, 1706; and on the same day received the baptismal name of
Benjamin at the Old South Church in that city. He continued for more
than seventy of the eighty-four years of his life a subject of four
successive British monarchs. During that period, neither Anne nor
either of the three Georges who succeeded her had a subject of whom
they had more reason to be proud, nor one whom at his death their
people generally supposed they had more reason to detest. No
Englishman of his generation can now be said to have established a
more enduring fame, in any way, than Franklin established in many
ways. As a printer, as a journalist, as a diplomatist, as a statesman,
as a philosopher, he was easily first among his peers.

On the other hand, it is no disparagement of the services of any of
his contemporaries on either side of the Atlantic, to say that no one
of his generation contributed more effectually to the dissolution of
the bonds which united the principal British-American colonies to the
mother country, and towards conferring upon them independence and a
popular government.

As a practical printer Franklin was reported to have had no superiors;
as a journalist he exerted an influence not only unrivaled in his day,
but more potent, on this continent at least, than either of his
sovereigns or their Parliaments. The organization of a police, and
later of the militia, for Philadelphia; of companies for extinguishing
fires; making the sweeping and paving of the streets a municipal
function; the formation of the first public library for Philadelphia,
and the establishment of an academy which has matured into the now
famous University of Pennsylvania, were among the conspicuous reforms
which he planted and watered in the columns of the Philadelphia
Gazette. This journal he founded; upon the earnings of it he mainly
subsisted during a lon