[14] This pleasantry on the part of the French minister seems to have been taken au sérieux by certain writers as pointing to some obscurity of origin, while the fact is substantiated by various authorities that Eléonore-François-Elie, Comte de Moustier, entered the diplomatic service at eighteen, and after representing his country at several foreign courts was twice offered the position of Minister of Foreign Affairs by Louis XVI.
[15] United States Gazette, May 9, 1789.
[16] It is interesting to turn from these Republican festivities to read in the journal of a Moravian minister, written in New York during the occupation of the British, of King’s and Queen’s “Birthnight Balls,” “Coronation Day” celebrations, and rejoicings over the arrival of “His Royal Highness, Prince William Henry, the third son of our dear King, an amiable young Prince, who gave satisfaction to all who saw him.”—Diary of Ewald Gustav Schaukirk.
[17] “The old Beekman house, built by James Beekman, and standing three miles from the City Hall in New York, was the scene of a number of interesting events. During the British possession of the city it was occupied by the commander-in-chief of their army, and one room at the head of a flight of stairs was occupied by Major André the night before proceeding up the river on his ill-fated expedition to West Point, while (strange providence) but a few yards distant still stands [1848] the green house where Captain Nathan Hale, of the American army, received his trial and condemnation as a spy.”—Jerome B. Holgate.
[18] Evidently referring to the Bee family of S. C.
American Philosophical Society
In none of his schemes and foundations did Dr. Franklin more signally display the breadth and catholicity of his mind than in his plan for the establishment, in the New World, of an association for the general diffusion of useful knowledge, to which the Old World should be tributary, and from which it should in time be recipient. With this end in view, he, in 1743, issued a proposal for the organization and government of an American Philosophical Society, whose object was to bring into correspondence with a central association in Philadelphia all scientists, philosophers, and inventors, on this continent and in Europe. Bold as was this scheme in its breadth and reach, in its smaller details it was marked by the practical characteristics of the projector. The Hamiltons and Franklins might “dream dreams and see visions” to the end of the chapter; but they would have framed no governments, or have founded no learned institutions destined to outlast the centuries, had not their ideality been well balanced by the strong common sense that Guizot calls “the genius of humanity.” It was this union of the ideal and the practical that caused Franklin to be so appreciated by the French. Mirabeau named him “the sage of two worlds,” with a larger grasp of thought than that of our own day, when he is still claimed, like the debatable baby brought to King Solomon, by two cities,—by Boston, in which he first saw the light, and by Philadelphia, in which he disseminated it so liberally.
Although there is a vast amount of documentary evidence to prove that the American Philosophical Society was the direct outcome of Franklin’s proposal of 1743, and that before the breaking out of the war with Great Britain it was an active and useful organization, having a large native and foreign membership, two of Dr. Franklin’s biographers have done but scant justice to his work in this direction. Professor McMaster, in his recent interesting life of Franklin as a man of letters, dismisses his proposal to establish such a society as a failure;[19] while Mr. Parton, after mentioning the fact of Franklin having founded the Philosophical Society, in accordance with his proposal of 1743, adds, “The society was formed, and continued in existence for some years. Nevertheless, its success was neither great nor permanent, for at that day the circle of men capable of taking much interest in science was too limited for the proper support of such an organization.”[20]