"The closing scene suggests gloomy reflections, as the lurid glare, which, during his extraordinary life, had attracted the eyes of the world, disappears; while we have not the record we could desire, indicating that the moral sensibilities of the Philosopher were rightly alive to the decisive nature of the awful change. His seventy years are ended, and the lightning seems lost among dark clouds. During the last day of his life, we are told, he was buried in conversation with his physician on the nature of his disease, and on the doctrines of alchymy. Towards evening, his servant asked him if he would receive the Eucharist. 'Let me alone,' said he, 'I have done ill to no one. I have nothing to confess. All must die.' He raised himself on his bed, and tried to write. The darkness of death was gathering around him. He found himself unable to read what he had written. He tore the paper, and, lying down, covered his face, and a few minutes after 9 o'clock, on the evening of the 14th of November, 1716, he ceased to breathe! It is most solemn to contemplate a human spirit, whose course of thought throughout life was unsurpassed for power of speculation, and daring range of mind among the higher objects of knowledge, and which, at the period of its departure, was in the depths of a controversy about the mysteries of a supersensible world—thus summoned into that world, to become conversant in its final relations with that Being who had entrusted it with such mental power, and whose nature and attributes had so often tasked its speculative energies."—North British Review.
FRANKLIN'S DISCOVERIES.
Of all this great man's scientific excellencies, the most remarkable is the smallness, the simplicity, the apparent inadequacy of the means which he employed in his experimental researches. His discoveries were all made with hardly any apparatus at all; and if, at any time, he had been led to employ instruments of a somewhat less ordinary description, he never rested satisfied until he had, as it were, afterwards translated the process, resolving the problem with such simple machinery, that you might say he had done it wholly unaided by apparatus. The experiments by which the identity of lightning and electricity was demonstrated, were made with a sheet of brown paper, a bit of twine or silk thread, and an iron key!—Lord Brougham.
CARNÔT, WHEN A CHILD.
The aptitude and taste for military affairs of Carnôt, destined afterwards to perform so important a part in the history of Europe, displayed itself in a singular manner while he was yet a child. Being taken for the first time to a theatre, where some siege or other warlike operation was represented, he astonished the audience by interrupting the piece to complain of the manner in which the general had disposed his men and his guns, crying out to him that his men were in fire, and loudly calling upon him to change his position. In fact, the men were so placed as to be commanded by a battery.
SMEATON'S INDEPENDENCE.
Smeaton, the engineer, often evinced a high feeling of independence in respect to pecuniary matters, and would never allow motives of emolument to interfere with plans laid on other considerations. The Empress Catherine of Russia was exceedingly anxious to have his services in the formation of great engineering works in her dominions, and she commissioned the Princess Dackshaw to offer him his own terms, if he would accede to her proposal. But his plans and his heart were bent upon the exercise of his skill in his own country, and he steadily refused all the offers made to him. It is reported that when the Princess found her attempts unavailing, she said to him, "Sir, you are a great man, and I honour you. You may have an equal in abilities, perhaps, but in character you stand single. The English minister, Sir Robert Walpole, was mistaken; and my sovereign, to her loss, finds one who has not his price."