and tame compared with that which awaited him at Paris. Princes and nobles, statesmen and warriors, women of rank, men of fashion, philosophers, doctors, men of all sorts, welcomed him with a welcome such as had never yet fallen to the lot of man. To his house came Turgot, now free from the cares of state, and Vergennes, who still kept his portfolio; Buffon, first among naturalists, and Cabanis, first among physicians; D'Alembert and La Rochefoucauld, Raynal, Morellet, Mably and Malesherbes, for the fame of Franklin was great in France. Philosophers ranked him with Newton and Leibnitz. Diplomatists studied his answers in the examination before the commons of England. The people knew him as Bonhomme Richard. Men of letters pronounced "The Way to Wealth" "un très-petit livre pour des grandes choses," and, translated and annotated, it was used in the schools. Limners spent their ingenuity in portraying his features. His face was to be seen on rings, on bracelets, on the covers of snuff-boxes, on the prints that hung in the shop-windows. His bust was set up in the royal library. Medallions of him appeared at Versailles. If he made a jest, or said a good thing, the whole of France knew it. To one who asked him if a statement of Lord Stormont the English ambassador was true, he replied, "No, sir, it is not a truth, it is a - Stormont." And immediately a Stormont became another name for a lie. To another who came to lament with him over the retreat through the Jerseys and the misery at Valley Forge, he replied, "Ça ira, Ça ira; " (it will all come right in the end.) Frenchmen took up the words, remembered them, and in a time yet more terrible made them a revolutionary cry.

To the people he was the personification of the rights of man. It was seldom that he entered Paris. But when he did so, his dress, his wigless head, his spectacles, his walking stick, and his great fur cap marked him out as the American. If he went on foot, a crowd was sure to follow at his heels. If he entered the theatre, a court of justice, a public resort of any kind, the people were sure to burst forth into shouts of applause. Their hats, coats, canes, snuff-boxes, were all à la Franklin. To sit at table with him was an honor greatly sought. Poets wrote him wretched sonnets. Noble dames addressed him in detestable verse. Women crowned his head with flowers. Grave Academicians shouted with ecstasy to see him give Voltaire a kiss. No house was quite in fashion that did not have a Franklin portrait over the chimney-piece, a Franklin stove in one of the chambers, and in the garden, a liberty tree planted by his hand. The "Gazette" of Amiens undertook to prove that his ancestors had been French.

With adulation so gross were mingled, however, some sneers of contempt. The author of a "History of a French Louse" loaded him with abuse, and described him as a vulgar fellow with wrinkled forehead and warty face, with teeth that might have been taken for cloves had they not been fast in a heavy jaw, and with the manners and gestures of a fop. Marquise de Crequi could not abide him because he ate eggs with pepper, salt, and butter in a goblet, and cut his melon with a knife. "'Tis the fashion nowadays," sneered a third, have an engraving of Franklin over one's mantelpiece, as it was formerly to have a jumpingjack."1 Capefigue long afterwards described him as one of the great charlatans of the eighteenth century.

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But these sneers, if heard at all, passed unheeded. Franklin was an American, and whatever was American was right. One French sheet pronounced the revolution the most interesting of its day. Another printed translations of the circular letters of congress. A third went to the cost of getting news direct from Boston. All over France the press abounded with spicy "Anecdotes Américaines." American maps, books, almanacs were eagerly sought for. It was now that Suard translated Robertson's America, that Dubuisson put forth "Abrégé de la Révolution de l'Amérique Anglaise," that school-children for the first time read "Science du Bonhomme Richard."

Seizing the opportunity, Franklin had a hasty translation of the state constitutions made by M. Dubourg, and spread them over the country. The effect was astonishing. Liberty, constitutions, rights of man, began to be heard on every hand. Some found fault with the constitutions of New Jersey and North Carolina for excluding Roman Catholics from office. Some thought Massachusetts wrong in giving Harvard College power to bestow honorary degrees, which were undemocratic. A few blamed the states for servilely following the laws and usages of England. But the "Mercure de France" was loud in its praises of the constitutions, and the opinion of the "Mercure" was the opinion of France.

There was, however, one point to which enthusiasm for America did not go. Frenchmen were ready to burst into raptures over the Declaration of Independence, to laud the thir

teen constitutions as a "code that marks an epoch in the history of philosophy," to name Americans "the brave generous children of liberty," to call Franklin the Solon and Washington the Fabius of the age, and to hurry to their maps to put their fingers on Bunker Hill, on Trenton, and the line of retreat through New Jersey; they were eager to have their king send ships and troops and money to the " insurgents," - but they were not disposed to invest their private savings in American scrip.

To persuade them to part with their money, Franklin now wrote " A Comparison of Great Britain and America as to credit in 1777;" "А Catechism relative to the English National Debt;" and "A Dialogue between Britain, France, Spain, Holland, Saxony, and America," had the pieces translated into four languages, and sent to the money centers of Europe. But they did not bring forth one groat. Nor can any one who will take the pains to read them be at a loss to know why. The style is excellent; the wit is good; the illustrations are apt; the facts are true. But there is not in them a single reason which could persuade a capitalist to loan money to the rebellious subjects of King George. It was true that industry, frugality, honesty, prompt payment of former loans, ought to do much towards settling