from week to week, of making a little journey into Essex, in which I intended to call at Wanstead, and promised to myself the pleasure of seeing you there. I have now fixed this day se'nnight for that journey, and purpose to take Mrs. Stevenson out with me, leave her with you till the next day, and call for her on Saturday in my return. Let me know by a line if you think any thing may make such a visit from us at that time improper or inconvenient. Present my sincere respects to Mrs. Tickell, and believe me ever, dear Polly, your truly affectionate friend and humble B. FRANKLIN.

servant,

P. S. We have company that dine with us today, and your careful mamma, being busied about many things, cannot write. Will did not see you in the Park. Mr. Hunter and his sister are both gone. God prosper their voyage. My compliments to Miss Pitt.*

Much of Franklin's time during the year 1759 was devoted to electricity, as in fact it had been from his first arrival in England. The fame of his discoveries in that science had preceded him, and made him known to the learned throughout Europe. It was the occa sion of a large correspondence, which has nearly all been lost in the wreck of his papers. The following letter from the celebrated Musschenbroek was accompanied by a list of all the principal treatises on electricity, which had at that time been published in the Latin, German, French, and English languages.

"VIRO NOBILISSIMO AMPLISSIMOQUE, BENJAMINI FRANKLIN, s. p. d. P. V. MussCHENBROEK.

"Vir reverendus, qui se ministerio Evangelico fungi profitebatur, me tuo nomine rogavit, ut indicarem autores, qui de Electricitate scripserunt, mihique erant cogniti. Votis tuis lubenter annui; ita addisces quid alii in Europà præstiterunt eruditi, sed simul videbis neminem magis recondita mysteria Electricitatis detexisse Franklino.

"Utinam modo pergas proprio Marte capere experimenta, et aliâ incedere viâ, quam Europæi incesserunt, nam tum plura et alia deteges, quæ seculorum spatio laterent philosophos. Aer Pensylvanicus videtur esse electricitatis plenissimus; sed attende an per totum anni curricu

Political Remarks and Predictions in Regard to America. William Penn's Portrait. - Recollections of

his Visit to Scotland.

London, 3 January, 1760.

MY DEAR LORD, You have been pleased kindly to desire to have all my publications. I had daily expectations of procuring some of them from a friend to whom I formerly sent them when I was in America, and postponed writing to you, till I should obtain them; but at length he tells me he cannot find them; very mortifying this

lum, an interdum pauperior sit; quibus anni diebus, quo flante vento, quâ cœli constitutione; distingue nubes electricitatis plenas aut expertes, uti volante in altum serico incepisti detegere omnium primus. Opto similia perpulcra inventa legere Pensylvanica, ac scripsisti in litteris ad expertissimum virum Collinsonum; sique mecum quædam communicare digneris, tecum alia communicabo, nam meus scopus est scientiam physicam et naturalem promovere quamdiu vivam.

"Tu sis, amicissime, salutatus a tui benevolentissimo cultore, et vale. "Leyde, 15° Aprilis, 1759."

* Henry Home, better known by his title of Lord Kames, which he assumed, according to the custom of Scotland, on being appointed in 1752 a judge of the Court of Session. He was born in Berwick county in 1696, and was educated to the profession of the law, in which he became distinguished as an advocate and a judge. But his greatest eminence was derived from his literary productions, which were numerous, and some of them very celebrated, particularly his "Elements of Criticism," published in 1762; his "Sketches of the History of Man," in 1773; and a small work published in 1761, entitled "An Introduction to the Art of Thinking," which was originally compiled for the use of his own children. It is in two parts, the first a series of moral maxims, the second illustrations by little apologues, invented for the purpose; and anecdotes of different kinds, many of them, however, but little adapted to the end. Dr. Franklin, in a visit to Scotland in 1759, with his son William, passed some time with Lord Kames, and a friendship grew out of their intimacy which lasted during their lives. Lord Kames died December 27th, 1782, in the eighty-seventh year of his age.-W. T. F.

to an author, that his works should so soon be lost! So I can only send you my Observations on the Peopling of Countries, which happens to have been reprinted here; The Description of the Pennsylvania Fire-place, a machine of my contriving; and some little sketches that have been printed in the Grand Magazine, which I should hardly own, did I not know that your friendly partiality would make them seem at least tolerable.

How unfortunate I was, that I did not press you and Lady Kames more strongly to favor us with your company farther. How much more agreeable would our journey have been, if we could have enjoyed you as far as York. We could have beguiled the way, by discoursing on a thousand things, that now we may never have an opportunity of considering together; for conversation warms the mind, enlivens the imagination, and is continually starting fresh game, that is immediately pursued and taken, and which would never have occurred in the duller intercourse of epistolary correspondence. So that whenever I reflect on the great pleasure and advantage I received from the free communication of sentiment, in the conversation we had at Kames, and in the agreeable little rides to the Tweed side, I shall for ever regret our premature parting.

No one can more sincerely rejoice than I do, on the reduction of Canada; and this is not merely as I am a colonist, but as I am a Briton. I have long been of opinion, that the foundations of the future grandeur and stability of the British empire lie in America; and though, like other foundations, they are low and little now, they are, nevertheless, broad and strong enough to support the greatest political structure that human wisdom ever yet erected. I am, therefore, by no means

for restoring Canada. If we keep it, all the country from the St. Lawrence to the Mississippi will in another century be filled with British people. Britain itself will become vastly more populous, by the immense increase of its commerce; the Atlantic sea will be covered with your trading ships; and your naval power, thence continually increasing, will extend your influence round the whole globe, and awe the world! If the French remain in Canada, they will continually harass our colonies by the Indians, and impede if not prevent their growth; your progress to greatness will at best be slow, and give room for many accidents that may for ever prevent it. But I refrain, for I see you begin to think my notions extravagant, and look upon them as the ravings of a mad prophet.

Your Lordship's kind offer of Penn's picture is extremely obliging. But, were it certainly his picture, it would be too valuable a curiosity for me to think of accepting it. I should only desire the favor of leave to take a copy of it. I could wish to know the history of the picture before it came into your hands, and the grounds for supposing it his. I have at present some doubts about it; first, because the primitive Quakers declared against pictures as a vain expense; a man's suffering his portrait to be taken was conceived as pride; and I think to this day it is very little practised among them. Then, it is on a board; and I imagine the practice of painting portraits on boards did not come down so low as Penn's time; but of this I am not certain. My other reason is an anecdote I have heard, viz. that when old Lord Cobham was adorning his gardens at Stow with busts of famous men, he made inquiry of the family for the picture of William Penn, in order to get a bust formed from it, but could find none; that Sylvanus Bevan,

an old Quaker apothecary, remarkable for the notice he takes of countenances, and a knack he has of cutting in ivory strong likenesses of persons he has once seen, hearing of Lord Cobham's desire, set himself to recollect Penn's face, with which he had been well acquainted; and cut a little bust of him in ivory, which he sent to Lord Cobham, without any letter or notice that it was Penn's. But my Lord, who had personally known Penn, on seeing it, immediately cried out, "Whence comes this? It is William Penn himself!" And from this little bust, they say, the large one in the gardens was formed.

I doubt, too, whether the whisker was not quite out of use at the time when Penn must have been of an age appearing in the face of that picture. And yet, notwithstanding these reasons, I am not without some hope that it may be his; because I know some eminent Quakers have had their pictures privately drawn and deposited with trusty friends; and know, also, that there is extant at Philadelphia a very good picture of Mrs. Penn, his last wife. After all, I own I have a strong desire to be satisfied concerning this picture; and as Bevan is yet living here, and some other old Quakers that remember William Penn, who died but 1718, I would wish to have it sent to me carefully packed up in a box by the wagon, (for I would not trust it by sea,) that I may obtain their opinion. The charges I shall very cheerfully pay; and if it proves to be Penn's picture, I shall be greatly obliged to your Lordship for leave to take a copy of it, and will carefully return the original.*

Dr. Franklin's doubts, respecting the above picture, were probably just. Mr. Tytler says, in his Life of Lord Kames, that it was sent to Dr. Franklin, and never returned; but the fact of its not having been known in Philadelphia, nor ever heard of since the above letter was