e
reputation. He attacked war, like Voltaire, not so much for its
wickedness as for its folly, and cheerfully gave up many years of a long
life to the effort to promote a better understanding among the nations
of the world.

It is perhaps needless to add what all persons who love good writing
know, that Benjamin Franklin was a most delightful writer. His letters
cover an amusing and extraordinary variety of topics. He ranges from
balloons to summer hats, and from the advantages of deep ploughing to
bifocal glasses, which, by the way, he invented. He argues for sharp
razors and cold baths, and for fresh air in the sleeping-room. He
discusses the morals of the game of chess, the art of swimming, the
evils of smoky chimneys, the need of reformed spelling. Indeed, his
passion for improvement led him not only to try his hand upon an
abridgment of the Book of Common Prayer, but to go even so far as to
propose seriously a new rendering of the Lord's Prayer. His famous
proposal for a new version of the Bible, however, which Matthew Arnold
solemnly held up to reprobation, was only a joke which Matthew Arnold
did not see-the new version of Job being, in fact, a clever bit
of political satire against party leadership in England. Even more
brilliant examples of his skill in political satire are his imaginary
"Edict of the King of Prussia against England," and his famous "Rules
for Reducing a Great Empire to a Small One. "But I must not try to call
the roll of all the good things in Franklin's ten volumes. I will simply
say that those who know Franklin only in his "Autobiography," charming
as that classic production is, have made but an imperfect acquaintance
with the range, the vitality, the vigor of this admirable craftsman
who chose a style "smooth, clear, and short," and made it serve every
purpose of his versatile and beneficent mind.

When the passage of the Stamp Act in 1765 startled the American colonies
out of their provincial sense of security and made them aware of their
real attitude toward the mother country, Franklin was in London. Eleven
years earlier, in 1754, he had offered a plan for the "Union of the
Colonies," but this had not contemplated separation from England. It was
rather what we should call a scheme for imperial federation under the
British Crown. We may use his word union, however, in a different field
from that of politics. How much union of sentiment, of mental and moral
life, of literary, educational