immediate and contingent relationship of affairs in order to arrive at just conclusions.
A striking example to illustrate this opinion of life and its attendant struggles is to be found in the auto-biography of Franklin. His honest chronicle of all his thoughts and doings enables us to recognize his extraordinary intellect, and his mighty services for the age in which he flourished and for all posterity, with a truthfulness we could never otherwise have obtained; and his renown is only rendered more enduring when we contemplate the extremes of his existence the destitute journeyman printer, and the noble statesman and philosopher: the self-taught sage is vested with still brighter renown when we find him at one time at the compositor's case, and, after successive changes, in the parliamentary arena, convicting the haughty Wedderburn of ignorance and insolence, to the admiration of a whole senate, and the approval of a Burke and a Priestley. He betrayed the lofty aspiration of his nature, when, even a stripling in years, he was solicitous of being introduced to Sir Isaac Newton, the philosopher whose glories his own were destined afterward to outshine. The cognomen of the penniless youth became a national name—the appellation of the land of his birth—and American citizen, and a countryman of Franklin, were synonymous terms.
Like remarks, and of a like tendency might be made in the case of Fulton. The extraordinary trials of his early life, the provocations he endured for years in his investigations and experimental essays, ere he accomplished navigation by steam, endear the man to us in a ten-fold view. I had the honor of a personal acquaintance with him. His liberal nature, his frank utterance, his chivalric bearing, all pronounced him one of Nature's noblest gifts. Neither the jeers of the vulgar nor the scoffs of the sciolist ever disturbed his equanimity or lessened the confidence he cherished in the ultimate results of his bold project. After his successful toils on the Hudson, it was affirmed it would be impossible to navigate in the East River, or cross the ferry to Brooklyn, because of the force of the currents. The folly of the declaration was soon demonstrated, and his floating dock, the subject of laughter by the unwise, completed the work he had long cogitated. When, soon after it was ascertained that this last
