who came to make speeches to us in Congress; but I thought it very hard if I could not command as much power of face as one of the chiefs of the Six Nations, and therefore determined that I would assume a cheerful countenance, enjoy the scene around me, and observe it as coolly as an astronomer contemplates the stars.  Inscriptions of Fructus Belli were seen on the ceiling and all about the walls of the room, among paintings of the trophies of war; probably done by the order of Louis XIV., who confessed in his dying hour, as his successor and exemplar Napoleon will probably do, that he had been too fond of war.  The king was the royal carver for himself and all his family.  His majesty ate like a king, and made a royal supper of solid beef, and other things in proportion.  The queen took a large spoonful of soup, and displayed her fine person and graceful manners, in alternately looking at the company in various parts of the hall, and ordering several kinds of seasoning to be brought to her, by which she fitted her supper to her taste.]

THE CHARACTER OF FRANKLIN

From Letter to the Boston Patriot, May 15th, 1811

Franklin had a great genius, original, sagacious, and inventive, capable of discoveries in science no less than of improvements in the fine arts and the mechanic arts.  He had a vast imagination, equal to the comprehension of the greatest objects, and capable of a cool and steady comprehension of them.  He had wit at will.  He had humor that when he pleased was delicate and delightful.  He had a satire that was good-natured or caustic, Horace or Juvenal, Swift or Rabelais, at his pleasure.  He had talents for irony, allegory, and fable, that he could adapt with great skill to the promotion of moral and political truth.  He was master of that infantine simplicity which the French call naivete which never fails to charm in Phaedrus and La Fontaine, from the cradle to the grave.  Had he been blessed with the same advantages of scholastic education in his early youth, and pursued a course of studies as unembarrassed with occupations of public and private life as Sir Isaac Newton, he might have emulated the first philosopher.  Although I am not ignorant that most of his positions and hypotheses have been controverted, I cannot but think he has added much to the mass of natural knowledge, and contributed largely to the progress of the human mind, both by his own writings and by the controversies and experiments he has excited in all parts of Europe.  He had abilities for investigating statistical questions, and in some parts of his life has written pamphlets and essays upon public topics with great ingenuity and success; but after my acquaintance with him, which commenced in Congress in 1775, his excellence as a legislator, a politician, or a negotiator most certainly never appeared.  No sentiment more weak and superficial was ever avowed by the most absurd philosopher than some of his, particularly one that he procured to be inserted in the first constitution of Pennsylvania, and for which he had such a fondness as to insert it in his will.  I call it weak, for so it must have been, or hypocritical; unless he meant by one satiric touch to ridicule his own republic, or throw it into everlasting contempt.