He was very pious, a great attender of sermons of the best preachers, which he took down in his short-hand, and had with him many volumes of them. He was also much of a politician; too much, perhaps, for his station. There fell lately into my hands, in London, a collection he had made of all the principal pamphlets relating to public affairs, from 1641 to 1717; many of the volumes are wanting as appears by the numbering, but there "Sent to Benjamin Franklin, 1713: "Tis time for me to throw aside my pen, When hanging sleeves read, write, and rhyme like men. This forward spring foretells a plenteous crop; For if the bud bear grain, what will the top? If plenty in the verdant blade appear, What may we not soon hope for in the ear? When flowers are beautiful before they're blown, If trees good fruit un'noculated bear, You may be sure 'twill afterward be rare. If fruits are sweet before they're time to yellow, How luscious will they be when they are mellow! If first year's shoots such noble clusters send, What laden boughs, Engedi-like, may we expect in the end !" These lines are more prophetic, perhaps, than the writer imagined. Sparks. This uncle Benjamin died in Boston, in 1728, leaving one son, Samuel, the only survivor of ten children. This son had an only child, who died in 1775, leaving four daughters. There are now no male descendants of Dr. Franklin's grandfather living who bear his name. The Doctor's eldest son William left one son, William Temple Franklin, who died without issue, bearing his name. His second son, Francis Folger, died when about four years of age. His very clever daughter Sarah married Richard Bache in 1767. Their descendants are-Benjamin Franklin Bache, who married Margaret Marcoe; William, who married Catharine Wistar; Deborah, who married William J. Duane; Richard, who married a daughter of Alexander J. Dallas; Sarah, who married Thomas Sargeant, together with their children. B. still remain eight volumes in folio, and twenty-four in quarto and in octavo. A dealer in old books met with them, and knowing me by my sometimes buying of him, he brought them to me. It seems my There uncle must have left them here when he went to America, which was above fifty years since. are many of his notes in the margins.* *The Doctor refers to this trouvaille in one of his letters to Samuel Franklin, as follows: "LONDON, 12 July, 1771. "LOVING COUSIN: I received your kind letter of May 17th, and rejoice to hear that you and your good family are well. My love to them. With this I send you the print you desire for Mr. Bowen. He does me honor in accepting it. Sally Franklin presents her duty to you and Mrs. Franklin. Yesterday a very odd accident happened, which I must mention to you, as it relates to your grandfather. A person that deals in old books, of whom I sometimes buy, acquainted me that he had a curious collection of pamphlets bound in eight volumes folio, and twentyfour volumes quarto and octavo, which he thought from the subjects I might like to have, and that he would sell them cheap. I desired to see them, and he brought them to me. On examining, I found that they contained all the principal pamphlets and papers on public affairs that had been printed here from the Restoration down to 1715. In one of the blank leaves at the beginning of each volume the collector had written the titles of the pieces contained in it, and the price they cost him. Also notes in the margin of many of the pieces; and the collector, I find, from the handwriting and various other circumstances, was your grandfather, my uncle Benjamin. Wherefore, I the more readily agreed to buy them. I suppose he parted with them when he left England and came to Boston, soon after your father, which was about the year 1716 or 1717, now more than fifty years since. In whose hands they have been all this time I know not. The oddity is, that the bookseller, who could suspect nothing of any relation between me and the collector, should happen to make me the offer of them. My love to your good wife and children. B. "Your affectionate cousin, "B. FRANKLIN." D* This obscure family of ours was early in the Reformation, and continued Protestants through the reign of Queen Mary, when they were sometimes in danger of trouble on account of their zeal against popery. They had got an English Bible, and to conceal and secure it, it was fastened open with tapes under and within the cover of a joint-stool. When my great-great-grandfather read it to his family, he turned up the joint-stool upon his knees, turning over the leaves then under the tapes. One of the children stood at the door to give notice if he saw the apparitor coming, who was an officer of the spiritual court. In that case the stool was turned down again upon its feet, when the Bible remained concealed under it as before. This anecdote I had from my uncle Benjamin. The family continued all of the Church of England till about the end of Charles the Second's reign, when some of the ministers that had been outed for non-conformity holding conventicles in Northamptonshire, Benjamin and Josiah adhered to them, and so continued all their lives: the rest of the family remained with the Episcopal Church. Josiah, my father, married young, and carried his wife with three children into New England, about 1682. The conventicles having been forbidden by law, and frequently disturbed, induced some considerable men of his acquaintance to remove to that country, and he was prevailed with to accompany them thither, where they expected to enjoy their mode of religion with freedom. By the same wise he had four children more born there, and by a second wife ten more, in all seventeen; of which I remember thirteen sitting at one time at his table, who all grew up to be men and women, and married; I was the youngest son, and the youngest child but two, and was born in Boston, New England.* My mother, the second wife, was Abiah Folger, daughter of Peter Folger, one of the first settlers of New England, of whom honorable mention is made by Cotton Mather, in his church history of that country, entitled Magnalia Christi Americana, as "a godly, learned Englishman," if I remember the words rightly. I have heard that he wrote sundry small occasional pieces, but only one of them was printed, which I saw now many years since. It was written in 1675, in the home-spun verse of that time and people, and addressed to those then concerned in the government there. It was in favor of liberty of conscience, and in behalf of the Baptists, Quakers, and other sectaries that had been under persecution, *He was born January 6th, 1706, old style, being Sunday, and the same as January 17th, new style, which his biographers have usually mentioned as the day of his birth. By the records of the Old South Church in Boston, to which his father and mother belonged, it appears that he was baptized the same day. In the old public Register of Births, still preserved in the Mayor's Office in Boston, his birth is recorded under the date of January 6th, 1706. At this time his father occupied a house in Milk street, opposite to the Old South Church, but he removed shortly afterward to a house at the corner of Hanover and Union streets, where it is believed he resided the remainder of his life, and where the son passed his early years.-Sparks. ascribing the Indian wars, and other distresses that had befallen the country, to that persecution, as so many judgments of God to punish so heinous an offense, and exhorting a repeal of those uncharitable laws. The whole appeared to me as written with a good deal of decent plainness and manly freedom. The six concluding lines I remember, though I have forgotten the two first of the stanza; but the purport of them was, that his censures proceeded from goodwill, and, therefore he would be known to be the author. "Because to be a libeller (says he) I hate it with my heart; From Sherburne* town, where now I dwell Without offense your real friend, It is Peter Folgier."t The poem, if such it may be called, of which these are the closing lines, extends through fourteen pages of a duodecimo pamphlet, entitled "A Looking-Glass for the Times; or the former spirit of New England revived in this generation, by Peter Folger." It is dated at the end, "April 23d, 1676." The lines, which immediately precede those quoted by Dr. Franklin, and which are necessary to complete the sentiment intended to be conveyed by the author, are the following : "I am for peace and not for war, And that's the reason why I write more plain than some men do, That use to daub and lie. But I shall cease, and set my name To what I here insert, Because to be a libeler I hate it with my heart." †The author's muse speaks even in the title-page, and explains to the reader his design in writing the “Looking-Glass for the Times :” "Let all that read these verses know, That I intend something to show |