The elegant J. Dickinson, Esq. informed me, that he was at Dr. Franklin's one evening, with a large party, when a dreadful cloud began to rise, with distant thunder and lightning. The ladies, panic struck, as usual, were all in a prodigious bustle for their bonnets, to get home. The doctor entreated them not to be frightened; for that they were in the safest house in Philadelphia; and indeed, jokingly offered to underwrite their lives at the low premium of a groat a head.
When the storm was near its worst, he invited his company up into his large chamber. A glimmering light faintly showed them his electrical apparatus of globes, cylinders, bells, wires, and the Lord knows what, conveying to those of the superstitious sort, a strong idea of a magic cell, or a haunted castle, at least. Presently a dreadful clap of thunder shook the house over their heads, the chamber was filled with vivid lightnings, darting like fiery serpents, crackling and hissing along the wire all around them, while the strong smell of sulphur, together with the screams of the poor ladies, and the ringing of the bells, completed the terribleness of the scene, inspiring a fearful sense of the invisible world.
"But all these things, gentlemen," he would say, smiling all the time on his crowding and gaping friends, as a parent on his children, whom he saw surprised at small matters, "all these things are mere nothings; the childish sportings of an art but yet in its cradle. Electricity, gentlemen, is of the terrible family of lightning, that most powerful of the works of God on this globe, and the chosen instrument of most of his operations here below. It is the electric fluid, (passing from a full cloud to an empty one,) that makes his voice, and that, as the scripture says, a terrible voice, even the thunder, to terrify the guilty, and to increase in the virtuous a becoming reverence of the Creator. For if the electric fluid passing from a small jar, cause so loud a crack, why should we wonder at the dreadful peals of thunder that are occasioned, when thousands and myriads of acres of clouds are throwing off their electric fluid in rivers of living fires, sufficient to blow up the globe itself, if the Almighty were but to let loose his hold on these furious agents. And this electric fluid is that same lightning which, as David says, shines out from one end of Heaven to another, and that so instantaneously, that were all the men, women, and children, on earth, joining hands, to form a ring round this great globe, an electric shock given to the first person in that ring, would so suddenly reach the last, that they themselves would probably be at a loss to determine which of them received it first.
"Thus the electric fluid, in the form of lightning, serves also in the hand of heaven as the red rod to restrain the vicious. Does the benevolent governor of the world seek to impress a salutary awe on the gambler, the drunkard, and such immoral characters, whose lives are in constant opposition to their own and the happiness of others? He but speaks to his ready ministers, the lightnings. Quickly, from the sultry cloud, coming up with muttering thunder, black and terrible as nature's approaching pall, the frightening flash bursts forth, rending the trees and houses over their heads; killing their flocks and herds; and filling the air with smoking sulphur, a strong memento of that dismal place to which their evil practices are leading them. And when, to unthinking mortals, he sees fit to read instruction on a wider scale, he only needs but beckon to the electric fluid. Straightway this subtle servant of his power rushes forth, clad in various forms of terror, sometimes as the roaring whirlwind, unroofing the palaces of kings, and desolating the forests in its course. Sometimes with dreadful stride it rushes forth upon the 'howling wilderness of waves,' in shape of the funnelled water-spout, with hideous roar and foam, whirling the frightened billows to the clouds, or dashing them back with thundering crash into their dismal gulphs; while the hearts of the seamen, looking on, sink with terror at the sight, and even sharks and sea-monsters fly for refuge to their oozy caverns.
"Sometimes, with the bolder aim of the earthquake, it strikes both sea and land at once, sending the frightened globe bellowing and trembling along her orbit, sadly pondering the coming day, when the measure of sin being filled up, she shall be wrapt in these same electric fires, perhaps, and lose her place for ever among the starry train."
But though the experiments above mentioned are highly curious; and also Dr. Franklin's reflections on them abundantly philosophical and correct, for what I know, yet the world should learn that the gratification of public curiosity formed but a very small part of his many and grand discoveries in electricity. For soon as he had ascertained that lightning was the same thing with the electric fluid, and like it, so passionately fond of iron that it would forsake every thing else in its course, to run along upon that beloved metal, he conceived the plan of putting this discovery to those beneficent uses for which alone he thought the power of discovery was given to man, and which alone can consecrate it to the divine Giver.
"The grand practical use," says the learned Mr. Immison, who, though a Scotch monarchist himself, had the extraordinary virtue to be a profound admirer of our republican American,—"the grand practical use which Dr. Franklin made of this discovery was to secure houses and ships from being damaged by lightning; a thing of vast consequence in all parts of the world, but more especially in North America, where thunder gusts are more frequent and their effects, in that dry air, more dreadful than they are ever known to be with us. This great end he accomplished by the cheap, and seemingly trifling, apparatus of a pointed metallic rod, fixed higher than any part of the building, and communicating with the ground, or rather the nearest water. This rod the lightning is sure to seize upon preferably to any other part of the building, unless it be very large; in which case, rods may be erected at each extremity; by which means this dangerous power is safely conducted to the earth, and dissipated without doing any harm to the edifice."
Had any thing more been necessary to convince the world of the value of lightning rods to buildings, it was abundantly furnished by several very terrible instances of destruction which took place about this time in several parts of America, for no other reason upon earth, as every one must admit who reads the account, but the want of lightning rods.
There, for example, was the affair of the new church, in the town of Newberry, New-England. This stately building was adorned on its north end with an elegant steeple or tower of wood, running up in a fine square, seventy feet from the ground to the bell, and thence went off in a taper spire of wood, likewise seventy feet higher, to the weathercock. Near the bell was fixed an iron hammer to strike the hours; and from the tail of the hammer, a wire went down through a small gimblet hole in the floor that the bell stood upon, and through a second floor in like manner; then horizontally under the plaistered ceiling of that floor to a plaistered wall, then down that wall to a clock which stood about twenty feet below the bell.
Now come, gentlemen, you who have no faith in lightning rods—you who think it blasphemy to talk of warding off God Almighty's lightning!—as if it were not just as pleasing to him to see you warding off the lightning by steel rods, as warding off the ague and fever by jesuit's bark; come, I say, and see how very visibly he approbates our works of wisdom, which make us like himself. You have read the structure of this steeple—the top, a seventy feet spire without any rod—then a rod that went down zigzag, about thirty feet; then a plaistered brick and stone wall without any rod, to the ground. A dreadful cloud came over the steeple. At the first flash, away went the whole of the seventy foot wooden spire, scattered all over the church yard in splinters fit to boil the preacher's tea kettle. The lightning then found the iron wire which it instantly seized on, quitting all things else for that, and darting along with it in so close an embrace, as barely to widen a little the gimblet holes through which it passed. It then followed the wire in all its meanders, whether perpendicular or horizontal—never turning either to the right or to the left, to hurt the building, but passed through it the whole length of the wire, which was about thirty feet, as harmlessly as a lamb. But soon as its dear chain was ended, it assumed the furious lion again; attacking the building with the most destructive rage, dashing its foundation stones to a great distance, and in other respects damaging it dreadfully.