re
to return to America was much attenuated.

How delightful, indeed, was this Old England! "Of all the enviable
things England has," he writes, "I envy it most its people.... Why
should this little island enjoy in almost every neighborhood more
sensible, virtuous, and elegant minds, than we can collect in ranging
one hundred leagues of our vast forests?" What a proper place for a
philosopher to spin out the remnant of his days! The idea had occurred
to him; he was persistently urged by his friend William Strahan to carry
it into effect; and his other friend, David Hume, made him a pretty
compliment on the same theme: "America has sent us many good things,
gold, silver, sugar, tobacco; but you are the first philosopher for whom
we are beholden to her. It is our own fault that we have not kept him;
whence it appears that we do not agree with Solomon, that wisdom is
above gold; for we take good care never to send back an ounce of the
latter, which we once lay our fingers upon." The philosopher was willing
enough to remain; and of the two objections which he mentioned to
Strahan, the rooted aversion of his wife to embarking on the ocean and
his love for Philadelphia, the latter for the moment clearly gave him
less difficulty than the former. "I cannot leave this happy island and
my friends in it without extreme regret," he writes at the moment of
departure. "I am going from the old world to the new; and I fancy I
feel like those who are leaving this world for the next; grief at the
parting; fear of the passage; hope for the future."

When, on the 1st of November, 1762, Franklin quietly slipped into
Philadelphia, he found that the new world had not forgotten him. For
many days his house was filled from morning till night with a succession
of friends, old and new, come to congratulate him on his return;
excellent people all, no doubt, and yet presenting, one may suppose, a
rather sharp contrast to the "virtuous and elegant minds" from whom
he had recently parted in England. The letters he wrote, immediately
following his return to America, to his friends William Strahan and Mary
Stevenson lack something of the cheerful and contented good humor which
is Franklin's most characteristic tone. His thoughts, like those of a
homesick man, are ever dwelling on his English friends, and he still
nourishes the fond hope of returning, bag and baggage, to England for
good and all. The very letter which he begins by relating the cordiali