and joy at his safe return. General Washington, in a public letter, greeted his arrival with the same grateful sentiments, and he says himself, “I am surrounded by friends, and have an affectionate good daughter and son-in-law to take care of me. I have got into my niche, a very good house, which I built twenty-four years ago, and out of which I have been ever since kept by foreign employments."

He continued in his retirement to ponder deeply on the condition of man, and to seek by every means in his power to promote the interest of his fellow creatures. Several of his writings at this period, and later, when entirely disabled from going abroad by his infirmities, are evidence of this fact. Many societies, the philosophical, of which he was president, that for political inquiries, for alleviating the miseries of public prisons, and for promoting the abolition of slavery, held their meetings at his house, to enjoy the benefit of his council.

When his death was known, congress ordered a general mourning for him throughout America, of one month. In France, the expression of public grief was highly flattering to his memory; there the event was solemnized under the direction of the municipality of Paris, by funeral orations; the national assembly decreed that each of the members should wear mourning for three days, "in commemoration of the event," and that a letter of condolence for the irreparable loss they had sustained, should be directed to the American congress. These were honors truly glorious, and such as were never before paid by any public body of one nation to a citizen of another.

In stature, FRANKLIN was above the middle size; manly, athletic, and gracefully proportioned. His countenance had an air of serenity and peace; the natural effect of conscious integrity. The harmony of the features is remarkable; seeming formed at once to excite love and veneration, command authority, or conciliate esteem. His mind was stored with knowledge, which he had a very happy manner of imparting, enlivening his conversation by ingenious illustrations, sprightly thoughts or pleasantry, winning even the morose. Amidst all the pageantry of European courts, where a large portion of his life was passed, as well as in the intercourse he kept up with the most fashionable society, he retained his republican dress and the simplicity of his manners, never showing any mean pride in concealing the humility of his birth.

Such was Dr. FRANKLIN. In estimating his character, much regard must be had to the times; and faults of education or habit may well be pardoned in one whose main design was undoubtedly good.

THOMAS JEFFERSO N.

THOMAS JEFFERSON was born on the 2d day of April, 1743, at Shadwell, in Albemarle county, Virginia. His ancestors had emigrated to that province at an early period; their standing in the community was highly respectable, and they lived in circumstances of considerable affluence. His father, Peter Jefferson, was a person much esteemed and well known; he had been one of the commissioners for determining the boundary between Virginia and North Carolina, and at his death he left his son an ample and unembarrassed fortune.

THOMAS JEFFERSON was educated at the college of William and Mary, in Williamsburg, and, after distinguishing himself there, by his habits of patience and labor, became a student of law under the well known George Wythe, afterwards chancellor of the state of Virginia. On coming of age, he was admitted to the bar, appointed a justice of the peace for the county in which he lived, and, at the election following, became one of its representatives in the provincial legislature. His mind seems to have been imbued from his earliest youth with the most liberal political sentiments. On one of his seals, engraved about this time, the motto was "Ab eo libertas, à quo spiritus;" and on another, "Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God." These feelings gained strength from the position of public affairs. From the year 1763, a spirit of opposition to the British government gradually rose in the province, until, in 1769, it assumed the shape of a formal resolution not to import articles from the mother country; this resolution Mr. JEFFERSON signed himself, and promoted with all his influence.

On the 1st of January, 1772, he married the daughter of Mr Wayles, an eminent lawyer of Virginia, and, in the amiable and accomplished character of the lady, secured that domestic happiness which his own disposition so well fitted him to enjoy. Its duration, however, was but short; in little more than ten years, death deprived him of his wife, and left him the sole guardian of two infant daughters, to whose educa

tion he devoted himself with a zeal that might compensate them for their early loss.

In the early part of 1773, the first organized system of colonial resistance was established by the formation of committees of correspondence in the different provinces. This plan was devised and arranged by Mr. JEFFERSON, who privately assembled some of the bolder spirits of the state, at a public house called the Raleigh tavern, in Richmond, and suggested it to them. It was eagerly adopted, and its benefits became strikingly apparent, when in the following year the measures of the British government showed the increased necessity of united and resolute resistance. The passage of the Boston port act, and the bills which immediately followed it, had filled up the measure of insult and oppression. At this crisis, not content with his labors, which were constant as a member of the legislature, he wrote and published "A Summary View of the Rights of British America." This he designed as an exposition, to be laid before the British sovereign, of the wrongs inflicted on America, and the sort of redress she would demand. "Open your breast, sire," he says, addressing the king, “to liberal and expanded thought. It behoves you to think and act for your people. The great principles of right and wrong are legible to every reader; to peruse them, requires not the aid of many counsellors. The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest." For this publication, Lord Dunmore, the royal governor, threatened to prosecute him on a charge of high treason, and dissolved the legislature who had by their resolutions sustained the same doctrines. When the conciliatory propositions of the British ministry were sent out in the following year, the legislature was again assembled, and they were referred to a committee, who immediately presented a reply from the pen of Mr. JEFFERSON. This document, which is to be found in the histories of that period, has ever been considered as a state paper of the highest order; and it announced, in a great degree, the same sentiments as those which its author afterwards promulgated in the declaration of independence. It was hardly drawn up, when he was called to a wider scene. The colonies had determined to unite together, and send delegates to a general congress. In this body, then in session at Philadelphia, Mr. JEFFERSON took his seat on the 21st of June, 1775, and became immediately, what he always continued to be, one of its most distinguished members. In the following summer, the debates of congress, and the various expressions of public sentiment, showed that the time had arrived for a final and entire separation from Great Britain; and a committee was