FOOTNOTES:
[51] The lightning rod in its origin encountered the same religious misgivings as inoculation and insurance and many other ideas which have promoted human progress and happiness. The Rev. Thomas Prince at the time of the Lisbon earthquake thought that the more lightning rods there were the greater was the danger that the earth might become perilously surcharged with electricity. "In Boston," he said, "are more erected than anywhere else in New England; and Boston seems to be more dreadfully shaken. Oh! there is no getting out of the Mighty Hand of God! If we think to avoid it in the Air we can not in the Earth. Yea, it may grow more fatal."
[52] The lines under the portrait of Franklin by Cochin do not hesitate to exalt him above the most powerful forces of Nature and the authority of the Gods:
"C'est l'honneur et l'appui du nouvel hémisphère,
Les flots de l'Océan s'abaissent à sa voix;
Il réprime ou dirige à son gré le tonnerre.
Qui désarme les dieux peut-il craindre les rois?"
[53] "With Franklin grasp the lightning's fiery wing," is a line in Thomas Campbell's Pleasures of Hope. In his Age of Bronze, Byron asks in one place why the Atlantic should "gird a tyrant's grave"
"While Franklin's quiet memory climbs to heaven,
Calming the lightning which he thence hath riven."
And in another place in the same poem he speaks of
"Stoic Franklin's energetic shade,
Robed in the lightnings which his hand allayed."
Crabbe in his tribute to "Divine Philosophy" in the Library exclaims,
"'Tis hers the lightning from the clouds to call,
And teach the fiery mischief where to fall."