g the materials of instruction and curiosity from every country
and every age; he is striking out, in the concussion of new light, a new
order of ideas for his own times; he possesses secrets which men hide from
their contemporaries, truths they dared not utter, facts they dared not
discover. View him in the stillness of meditation, his eager spirit busied
over a copious page, and his eye sparkling with gladness! He has concluded
what his countrymen will hereafter cherish as the legacy of genius--you
see him now changed; and the restlessness of his soul is thrown into his
very gestures--could you listen to the vaticinator! But the next age only
will quote his predictions. If he be the truly great author, he will be
best comprehended by posterity, for the result of ten years of solitary
meditation has often required a whole century to be understood and to be
adopted. The ideas of Bishop BERKELEY, in his "Theory of Vision," were
condemned as a philosophical romance, and now form an essential part of
every treatise of optics; and "The History of Oracles," by FONTENELLE,
says La Harpe, which, in his youth, was censured for its impiety, the
centenarian lived to see regarded as a proof of his respect for religion.

"But what influence can this solitary man, this author of genius, have on
his nation, when he has none in the very street in which he lives? and it
may be suspected as little in his own house, whose inmates are hourly
practising on the infantine simplicity which marks his character, and that
frequent abstraction from what is passing under his own eyes?"

This solitary man of genius is stamping his own character on the minds of
his own people. Take one instance, from others far more splendid, in the
contrast presented by FRANKLIN and Sir WILLIAM JONES. The parsimonious
habits, the money-getting precepts, the wary cunning, the little scruple
about means, the fixed intent upon the end, of Dr. FRANKLIN, imprinted
themselves on his Americans. Loftier feelings could not elevate a man of
genius who became the founder of a trading people, and who retained the
early habits of a journeyman; while the elegant tastes of Sir WILLIAM
JONES could inspire the servants of a commercial corporation to open new
and vast sources of knowledge. A mere company of merchants, influenced by
the literary character, enlarges the stores of the imagination and
provides fresh materials for the history of human nature.

FRANKLIN, with that calm go