Volume I Part 4 (1/2)
”The torks I allude to, sir, will, in particular, give a noble rule and example of _self-education_ School and other education constantly proceed upon false principles, and show a clumsy apparatus pointed at a false mark; but your apparatus is si persons are left destitute of other justprepared for a reasonable course in life, your discovery, that the thing is in many a man's private poill be invaluable!
”Influence upon the private character, late in life, is not only an influence late in life, but a weak influence It is in _youth_ that we plant our chief habits and prejudices; it is in youth that we take our party as to profession, pursuits, and iven; in youth the education even of the next generation is given; in youth the private and public character is detere, life ought to begin well from youth; and more especially _before_ we take our party as to our principal objects
”But your biography will not merely teach self-education, but the education of _a wise hts and i detailed the conduct of another wise man And why are weaker men to be deprived of such helps, e see our race has been blundering on in the dark, aluide in this particular, from the farthest trace of time? Show then, sir, how much is to be done, _both to sons and fathers_; and invite all wise men to become like yourself, and other men to become wise
”When we see how cruel statesmen and warriors can be to the huuished men can be to their acquaintance, it will be instructive to observe the instancesreat and _doood-humoured_
”The little private incidents which you will also have to relate, will have considerable use, as ant, above all things, _rules of prudence in ordinary affairs_; and it will be curious to see how you have acted in these It will be so far a sort of key to life, and explain ht to have once explained to theht
”The nearest thing to having experience of one's own, is to have other people's affairs brought before us in a shape that is interesting; this is sure to happen froement will have an air of simplicity or importance that will not fail to strike; and I ainality as if you had been conducting discussions in politics or philosophy; and what more worthy of experiments and system (its importance and its errors considered) than human life!
”Some men have been virtuous blindly, others have speculated fantastically, and others have been shrewd to bad purposes; but you, sir, I a but what is at the saood
”Your account of yourself (for I suppose the parallel I a for Dr Franklin will hold not only in point of character, but of private history) will show that you are asha the in is to happiness, virtue, or greatness
”As no end, likewise, happens without a means, so we shall find, sir, that even you yourself framed a plan by which you becah the event is flattering, the means are as si upon nature, virtue, thought, and habit
”Another thing de for his tie of the world Our sensations being very et that more moments are to follow the first, and, consequently, that e his conduct so as to suit the _whole_ of a life Your attribution appears to have been applied to your _life_, and the passing moments of it have been enlivened with content and enjoy torrets Such a conduct is easy for those who make virtue and themselves their standard, and who try to keep thereat men, of whom patience is so often the characteristic
”Your Quaker correspondent, sir (for here again I will suppose the subject of ality, diligence, and temperance, which he considered as a pattern for all youth: but it is singular that he should have forgotten your modesty and your disinterestedness, without which you never could have waited for your advancement, or found your situation in thelesson to show the poverty of glory, and the i our minds
”If this correspondent had known the nature of your reputation as well as I do, he would have said, your forraphy and Art of Virtue; and your Biography and Art of Virtue, in return, would secure attention to thee attendant upon a various character, and which brings all that belongs to it into greater play; and it is the more useful, as, perhaps,their minds and characters than they are for the time or the inclination to do it
”But there is one concluding reflection, sir, that will show the use of your life as aseeue, and yet it is a very useful one; and your specimen of it may be particularly serviceable, as it will make a subject of comparison with the lives of various public cutthroats and intriguers, and with absurd monastic self-tores s of the same kind with your own, and induces more men to spend lives fit to be written, it will be worth all Plutarch's Lives put together
”But being tired of figuring to ure suits only onehim the praise of it, I shall end my letter, my dear Dr Franklin, with a personal application to your proper self
”I am earnestly desirous, then, my dear sir, that you should let the world into the traits of your genuine character, as civil broilsyour great age, the caution of your character, and your peculiar style of thinking, it is not likely that any one besides yourself can be sufficiently master of the facts of your life or the intentions of your mind
”Besides all this, the immense revolution of the present period will necessarily turn our attention towards the author of it; and when virtuous principles have been pretended in it, it will be highly important to show that such have really influenced; and, as your own character will be the principal one to receive a scrutiny, it is proper (even for its effects upon your vast and rising country, as well as upon England and upon Europe) that it should stand respectable and eternal For the furtherance of human happiness, I have always maintained that it is necessary to prove that man is not even at present a vicious and detestable anireatly amend him; and it is for much the same reason that I am anxious to see the opinion established, that there are fair characters a the individuals of the race; for the moment that all ood people will cease efforts dee their share in the scra it comfortable principally for themselves
”Take then, my dear sir, this work ood; tes, prove yourself as one who, from your infancy, have loved justice, liberty, and concord, in a way that has made it natural and consistent for you to act as we have seen you act in the last seventeen years of your life Let Englishmen be made not only to respect, but even to love you When they think well of individuals in your native country, they will go nearer to thinking well of your country; and when your countryo nearer to thinking well of England Extend your views even farther; do not stop at those who speak the English tongue, but, after having settled sothe whole race of men
”As I have not read any part of the life in question, but know only the character that lived it, I write somewhat at hazard I am sure, however, that the life, and the treatise I allude to (on the _Art of Virtue_), will necessarily fulfil the chief of my expectations; and stillthese performances to the several views above stated Should they even prove unsuccessful in all that a sanguine admirer of yours hopes from them, you will at least have fraives a feeling of pleasure that is innocent to man, has added so much to the fair side of a life otherwise too much darkened by anxiety and too much injured by pain
”In the hope, therefore, that you will listen to the prayer addressed to you in this letter, I beg to subscribe myself, my dear sir, &c, &c,
”BENJ VAUGHAN”
CONTINUATION,
_Begun at Passy, near Paris, 1784_
It is some time since I received the above letters, but I have been too busy till now to think of coht, too, bemy papers, which would aiduncertain, and having just now a little leisure, I will endeavour to recollect and write what I can: if I live to get ho any copy here of what is already written, I know not whether an account is given of the means I used to establish the Philadelphia public library, which, froh I remember to have come down near the tiin here with an account of it, which iven
At the tiood bookseller's shop in any of the colonies to the southward of Boston In New-York and Philadelphia the printers were, indeed, stationers, but they sold only paper, &c, almanacs, ballads, and a few coed to send for their books froland: the members of the Junto had each a few We had left the alehouse where we first met, and hired a room to hold our club in I proposed that we should all of us bring our books to that room, where they would not only be ready to consult in our conferences, but beco at liberty to borrow such as he wished to read at holy done, and for soe of this little collection, I proposed to render the benefit fro a public subscription library I drew a sketch of the plan and rules that would be necessary, and got a skilful conveyancer, Mr Charles Brockden, to put the whole in forreeed to pay a certain sum down for the first purchase of the books, and an annual contribution for increasing them