and Locke, or between Fuller and Bryden. The learned digressions, the
witty conceits, the perpetual interlarding of the text with scraps of
Latin, have fallen off, even as the full-bottomed wig and the clerical
gown and bands have been laid aside for the undistinguishing dress of
the modern minister. In Edwards's English all is simple, precise,
direct, and business-like.

Benjamin Franklin (1706-90), who was strictly contemporary with
Edwards, was a contrast to him in every respect. As Edwards represents
the spirituality and other-worldliness of Puritanism, Franklin stands
for the worldly and secular side of American character, and he
illustrates the development of the New England Englishman into the
modern Yankee. Clear rather than subtle, without ideality or romance
or fineness of emotion or poetic lift, intensely practical and
utilitarian, broad-minded, inventive, shrewd, versatile, Franklin's
sturdy figure became typical of his time and his people. He was the
first and the only man of letters in colonial America who acquired a
cosmopolitan fame and impressed his characteristic Americanism upon the
mind of Europe. He was the embodiment of common sense and of the
useful virtues, with the enterprise but without the nervousness of his
modern compatriots, uniting the philosopher's openness of mind to the
sagacity and quickness of resource of the self-made business man. He
was representative also of his age, an age of _aufklärung_,
_eclaircissement_, or "clearing up." By the middle of the eighteenth
century a change had taken place in American society. Trade had
increased between the different colonies; Boston, New York, and
Philadelphia were considerable towns; democratic feeling was spreading;
over forty newspapers were published in America at the outbreak of the
Revolution; politics claimed more attention than formerly, and theology
less. With all this intercourse and mutual reaction of the various