In 1776, at the age of seventy, he became commissioner to the court of
France, where he remained until 1785. Every student of American history
knows the part he played there in popularizing the American Revolution,
until France aided us with her money and her navy. It is doubtful if any
man has ever been more popular away from home than Franklin was in France.
The French regarded him as "the personification of the rights of man." They
followed him on the streets, gave him almost frantic applause when he
appeared in public, put his portrait in nearly every house and on almost
every snuff box, and bought a Franklin stove for their houses.

He returned to Philadelphia in 1785, revered by his country. He was the
only man who had signed four of the most famous documents in American
history: the Declaration of Independence, the treaty of alliance with
France, the treaty of peace with England at the close of the Revolution,
and the Constitution of the United States. He had also become, as he
remains to-day, America's most widely read colonial writer. When he died in
1790, the American Congress and the National Assembly of France went into
mourning.

[Illustration: FACSIMILE OF THE TITLE-PAGE TO "POOR RICHARD'S ALMANAC" FOR
1733]

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS.--As an author, Franklin is best known for his
philosophy of the practical and the useful. Jonathan Edwards turned his
attention to the next world; Franklin, to this world. The gulf is as vast
between these two men as if they had lived on different planets. To the end
of his life, Franklin's energies were bent toward improving the conditions
of this mundane existence. He advises honesty, not because an eternal
spiritual law commands it, but because it is the best policy. He needs to
be supplemented by the great spiritual teachers. He must not be despised