_ELECTRICITY_.
_It may not be improper to present the reader with the following
extract from the preface to the first edition of Dr. Franklin's
papers on electricity, which, as we have stated in the advertisement,
formed a pamphlet only._
_"The following observations and experiments were not drawn up with a
view to their being made public, but were communicated at different
times, and most of them in letters, written on various topics, as
matters only of private amusement._
_"But some persons, to whom they were read, and who had themselves
been conversant in electrical disquisitions, were of opinion, they
contained so many curious and interesting particulars relative
to this affair, that it would be doing a kind of injustice to
the public, to confine them solely to the limits of a private
acquaintance._
_"The editor was therefore prevailed upon to commit such extracts of
letters and other detached pieces as were in his hands to the press,
without waiting for the ingenious author's permission so to do; and
this was done with the less hesitation, as it was apprehended the
author's engagements in other affairs would scarce afford him leisure
to give the public his reflections and experiments on the subject,
finished with that care and precision, of which the treatise before
us shows he is alike studious and capable."_
_With respect to the general merit and originality of the experiments
and hypothesis of Dr. Franklin, as described and explained in these
letters, the following is the testimony of one of the first natural
philosophers of his age--the late Dr. Priestly, in his History of
Electricity._
_"Nothing was ever written upon the subject of electricity which was
more generally read and admired in all parts of Europe than these
letters. There is hardly any European language into which they have
not been translated; and, as if this were not sufficient to make
them properly known, a translation of them has lately been made into
Latin. It is not easy to say, whether we are most pleased with the
simplicity and perspicuity with which these letters are written, the
modesty with which the author proposes every hypothesis of his own,
or the noble frankness with which he relates his mistakes, when they
were corrected by subsequent experiments._
_"Though the English have not been backward in acknowledging the
great merit of this philosopher, he has had the singular good fortune
to be, perhaps, even more celebrated abroad than at home; so that,
to form a just idea of the great and deserved reputation of Dr.
Franklin, we must read the foreign publications on the subject of
electricity; in many of which the terms_ Franklinism, Franklinist,
_and the_ Franklinian system, _occur in almost every page. In
consequence of this, Dr. Franklin's principles bid fair to be handed
down to posterity as equally expressive of the true principles of
electricity, as the Newtonian philosophy is of the true system of
nature in general."_
_LETTERS AND PAPERS_