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ARCHIMEDES AND FRANKLIN.

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LECTURE,

ISTHODUCTORY TO .\ COUKSE ON THE

APPLICATION OE SCIENCE TO ART

DELIVERED BEFOUE THE

BllimsnrlinsEtts Cliaritnlil]! jttn-jmiiir Jl3.gnriirtiDn,

NOVEMBER 29, 18S3.

BY ROBERT C. WINTHROP

ARCHIMEDES AND FRANKLIN.

LECTURE

INTaODUCTORT TO A COURSE ON THB

APPLICATION OE SCIENCE TO. ART,

DELIVERED BEFORE THE

3^MMrliiiEtt0 (£;|iiiiitclib IftwjiJittit tonmtinn,

ISrOTEMBER 29, 1853.

RY ROBERT C. WINTHROP.

SECOND EDITION.

BOSTON:
PRESS OF T. K. MAHVIN, 42 CONGRESS STREET.
1854.

Boston, December 8, 1853.
Hon. Eobert C. Winthrop :
Dear Sir, — At a meeting of the Government of the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic
Association, held last evening, the Lecture Committee were instructed to present to you,
in behalf of the Association, the thanks of the Board for the eloquent and interesting-
address delivered by you on the evening- of the 89th ult. as the Introductory Lecture
to the present course.
They were also further instructed to request a copy for the press, and to make all
necessary arrang-ements for its publication and distribution "to the members and the
public. The Committee hope it ^vill suit your convenience to furnish us the manuscript at
an early day, in order that it may awaken the public sentiment of our city, to the pro
priety of erecting- a Statue of Franklin in the place of his birth. The force and
pertinence with which you urged this measure in your address, will serve to quicken
the hearts of our people in its behalf; and its publication no doubt wUl be followed by
that energ-etic action which -will secure the final success of the project.
We remain,

Truly yours, &c.,

F. W. LINCOLN, Jr.
FRED. H. STIMPSON,
OSMTN BKEWSTEK,
JOSEPH M. WIGHTMAN,
ALBERT G. BROWNE, Committee.

Boston, 14 December, 1853.
Gentlemen :
I am greatly gratified by the proceedings of the Government of the Massachusetts
Charitable Mechanic Association, in reference to the Introductory Lecture which I had
the honor to deliver before them on the 29th ult.
I cannot hesitate a moment to place my manuscript at their disposal, and I pray you
to present to them, and to accept for yourselves, my sincere thanks for the very kind
and eomphmentary tenns in which the request was made and communicated.
Believe me, gentlemen. With true reg-ard,

Your friend and servant,

F. W. Lincoln, Jr.
Fred. H. Stimpson,
OsMYN Brewster,
Joseph M. Wightman,
Albert G. Browne, Esquires, Committee,

ROBERT C. WINTHROP.

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I
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LECTURE

A CHARMING Story which has come down to us in
reference to the great orator, philosopher, and patriot of
ancient Rome, — and which he has not thought it un
worthy to tell briefly of himself, in one of his Tusculan
Disputations, — may form a not inappropriate introduction
to the Lecture which I am here this evening to deliver.
While Cicero was quaestor in Sicily, — the first public
office which he ever held, and the only one to which he
was then eligible, being but just thirty ye^rs old, (for
the Roman laws required for one of the humblest of the
great offices of state the very same age which our Ameri
can Constitution requires for one ofthe highest,) — he paid
a visit to Syracuse, then among the greatest cities of the
world. The magistrates of the city, of course, waited on him
at once, to offer their services in showing him the lions
of the place, and requested him to specify anything
which he would like particularly to see. Doubtless, they
supposed that he would ask immediately to be conducted
to some one of their magnificent temples, that he might
behold and admire those splendid works of art with
which, — notwithstanding that Marcellus had made it his
glory to carry not a few of them away with him for the
decoration of the Imperial City, — Syracuse still abounded,
and which soon after tempted the cupidity, and fell a prey
to the rapacity, of the infamous Verres.

4
Or, haply, they may have thought that he would be
curious to see and examine the ear of Dionysius, as it
was called, — a huge cavern, cut out of the solid rock in
the shape of a human ear, two hundred and fifty feet long
and eighty feet high, in which that execrable tyrant con
fined all persons who came within the range of his sus
picion, — and which was so ingeniously contrived and
constructed, that Dionysius, by applying his own ear to
a small hole, where the sounds were collected as upon a
tympanum, could catch every syllable that was uttered
in the cavern below, and could deal out his proscription
and his vengeance accordingly, upon all who might dare
to dispute his authority, or to complain of his cruelty.
Or they may have imagined, perhaps, that he would
be impatient to visit at once the sacred fountain of
Arethusa, and the seat of those Sicilian Muses whom
Virgil so soon after invoked in commencing that most
inspired of all uninspired compositions, which Pope has
so nobly paraphrased in his glowing and glorious Eclogue
— the Messiah.
To their great astonishment, however, Cicero's first
request was, that they would take him to see the tomb
of Archimedes. To his own still greater astonishment,
as we may well believe, they told him in reply, that they
knew nothing about the tomb of Archimedes, and had
no idea where it was to be found, and they even posi
tively denied that any such tomb was still remaining
among them.
But Cicero understojsd perfectly well what he was
talking about. He remembered the exact description of
the tomb. He remembered the very verses which had
been inscribed on it. He remembered the sphere and
the cylinder which Archimedes had himself requested to
have wrought upon it, as the chosen emblems of his
to make search for it himself.

5
Accordingly, he rambled out into the place of their
ancient sepulchres, and, after a careful investigation, he
came at last to a spot overgrown with shrubs and bushes,
where presently he descried the top of a small column
just- rising above the branches. Upon this little column
the sphere and the cylinder were at length found carved,
the inscription was 'painfully decyphered, and the tomb
of Archimedes stood revealed to the reverent homage of
the illustrious Roman quaestor.
This was in the year 76 before the birth of our
Saviour. Archimedes died about the year 213 before
Christ. One hundred and thirty-six years, only, had
thus elapsed since the death of this celebrated person,
before his tombstone was buried up beneath briars and
brambles, and before the place and even the existence of
it were forgotten, by the magistrates of the very city, of
which he was so long the proudest ornament in peace,
and the most effective defender in war.
What a lesson to human pride, what a commentary on
human gratitude, was here ! It is an incident almost
precisely like that which the admirable and venerable
Dr. Watts imagined or imitated, as the topic of one of
his most striking and familiar Lyrics : — •
" Theron, amongst his travels, founci
A broken statue on the ground ;
And searching onward as he went,
He trao'd a ruin'd monument.
Mould, moss, and shades had overgrown
The sculpture of the crumbling stone,
Yet ere he pass'd, with much, ado,
He guess'd, and spell'd out, Sci-pi-o.
' Enough,' he cried ; ' I'll drudge no more
In turning the dull stoics o'er ;
Por when I feel my virtue faU,
And my ambitious thoughts prevail,
I'll take a tum among the tombs,
And see whereto all glory comes.' "
I do not learn, however, that Cicero was cured of his

eager vanity and his insatiate love of fame by this ' turn '
among the Syracusan tombs. He was then only just at
the threshold of his proud career, and he went back to
pursue it to its bloody end, with unabated zeal, and with
an ambition only extinguishable with his life.
And after all, how richly, how surpassingly, was this
local ingratitude and neglect made 'up to the memory of
Archimedes himself, by the opportunity which it afforded
to the greatest orator of the greatest Empire of antiquity,
to signalize his appreciation and his admiration of that
wonderful genius, by going out personally into the ancient
graveyards of Syracuse, and with the robes of office in
their newest gloss around him, to search for his tomb and
to do honor to his ashes ! The greatest orator of Impe
rial Rome anticipating the part of Old Mortality upon the
gravestone of the great mathematician and mechanic
of antiquity ! This, surely, is a picture for mechanics
in all ages to contemplate, with a proud satisfaction and
delight. In opening a Course of Lectures on the application of
Science to Art, under the auspices of the Massachusetts
Charitable Mechanic Association, I have thought that,
instead of any vague generalities upon matters and things
which they understand already as well and better than
I do, a brief notice of that great mathematical and me
chanical Genius, at whose grave Cicero thought it no
scorn to do homage, and who may be taken, in some
sort, as the very personification of the idea of Science
apphed to Art, would not be uninteresting or unwel
come. You have adopted Archimedes, Mr. President, as your
Patron Saint You have emblazoned his form on your
certificate of honorary membership, as I have had the
most agreeable opportunity of knowing. Yet it would
not be surprising if, to some of those before me at this

moment, the details of his story were hardly more fa
miliar than they seem to have been to the people of
Syracuse, when Cicero visited them nineteen hundred
and twenty-nine years ago, — and as they certainly were
to myself, I may add, before I entered on the preparation
of this Lecture.
Let me then inquire, for a moment, who this Archim
edes was, and what was his title to be thus remembered
and reverenced, not merely by the illustrious orator of
the Augustan era, but by the American mechanics of the
nineteenth century. And in doing this, I may perhaps
find occasion to compare his character and his services
with those of some one or more of the great inventors
and mechanics of our own day and of our own land.
Archimedes was born in the year 287 before the Chris
tian era, in the island of Sicily and city of Syracuse.
Of his childhood and early education we know absolutely
nothing, and nothing of his family, save that he is stated
to have been one of the poor relations of King Hiero,
who came to the throne when Archimedes was quite a
young man, and of whose royal patronage he more than
repaid whatever measure he may have enjoyed. He is
stated, also, to have traveled into Egypt in his youth,
and to have been a pupil of Conon, a celebrated Samian
astronomer, whose compliment to Berenice, the dueen
of Ptolemy Euergetes, will not be in danger of being
forgotten, as long as the sparkling constellation to which
he gave the name of Coma Berenices, in honor of her
golden locks, shall still be seen glittering in our evening
sky. I know not what other lady has secured so lofty a
renown, until, indeed, the accomplished Maria Mitchell,
of Nantucket, wrote her own name upon the golden locks
of a comet, discovered by her in 1847.
Neither royal patronage, however, nor the most learned
and accomplished tutors of Egypt or of Greece, could
have made Archimedes what he was. His was undoubt-

8
edly one of those great original minds, which seem to
owe Uttle to anybody but their Creator ; which come
into existence ready trained and furnished for some
mighty manifestation, and to which the accidents of life
and of condition supply nothing but occasions and oppor
tunities. Pallas springing full-armed from the bram of
Jove is the fabulous and familiar prototype of a class of
persons, whose powers and whose productions can be
attributed to nothing but a divine genius, and of whom
Homer, and Socrates, and Shakspeare, and Sir Isaac
Newton,— upon whose statue at Cambridge, in Old Eng
land, may be seen the proud inscription, that he surpassed
the human race in intellectual power,— will everywhere
suggest themselves as examples.
To this order of minds, Archimedes unquestionably
belonged. He has been well called, by a French philoso
pher, " The Homer of Geometry." It has been said of
him by those entitled to pronounce such a judgment, that
his theory of the lever was the foundation of statics till
the discovery of the composition of forces in the time of
Sir Isaac Newton ; that no essential addition was made
to the principles of the equilibrium of fluids and floating
bodies, established by him, in his treatise " De Insidenti-
bus," till the publication of Stevins's researches on the
pressure of fluids in 1608;* and again, "that he is one of
the few men whose writings form a standard epoch in the
history of the progress of knowledge," and that no fur
ther advance was made in the theory of mechanics after
his death, until the days of Galileo, who lived eighteen
hundred years later.
You will all agree with me, I doubt not, that the man
over whose theories and calculations eighteen centuries
may fairly be said to have rolled, without obliterating
their record, or even impairing their value and their

Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Eomaa Biography.

importance, may well be numbered among the fixed stars
of Science.
It is a striking fact, that Galileo himself, who may
well-nigh be included in the same order of intellects, and
who was the first to make any advance or improvement
in the condition of science after this long interval, —
prepared himself for pursuing his own great discoveries
by perusing the writings of Archimedes. It was while
studying the hydrostatical treatise of the old Syracusan
philosopher, that he first conceived the idea of writing an
essay on a kindred topic. It was that essay, in illustration
of some of the discoveries of Archimedes, which gained
for Galileo the favor of a patron, (Guido Ubaldi, the
brother-in-law of Cardinal del Monte,) to whom he after
wards owed most of his worldly success.
Would that this high priest of the stars, as he has
well been denominated, could have caught a little more
seasonably something of the noble courage of the brave
old Syracusan ! Would that, when summoned before the
Inquisition "for thinking in astronomy otherwise than
the Franciscan and Dominican licensers thought," —
instead of making an ignominious and humiliating abju
ration, he might have been seen boldly asserting to their
teeth, those eternal truths which had been revealed to
hira ; and accepting, if so it must have been, that crown
of martyrdom, which would have come to him " plaited
with immortal laurels ! "* I know of no scene in history
more derogatory to the character of poor human nature,
or more derogatory to the dignity of science, than that of
Galileo on his knees before the Inquisitors, recanting that
great doctrine of the motion of the earth around the sun
which it was his glory to have established ; and the sub
lime exclamation which he is related to have made in a
whisper, to a friend at his elbow, as he rose from his
• Sir David Brewster's Martyrs of Science.
2

10
knees, " It does move, notwithstanding,"— onXy adds a
deeper shade to our sense of his humiliation.
We shall have abundant evidence, that he did not
derive this unworthy spirit of submission from a study
of the life of Archimedes. He might rather be supposed
to have caught the idea, that such a stooping to arbitrary
power was not inconsistent with the beauty and noble
ness of his general character,— from the example of that
leaning tower of Pisa, upon whose summit Galileo is
known to have stood, in performing some of his experi
ments and in taking not a few of his observations, and
whose unaccountable deflection from a plumb-line seems
to have attracted more admiration in some quarters even
than the beauty of its proportions or the purity of its
material. It would be tedious and unprofitable to attempt any
detailed account, on such an occasion as this, of the
writings of Archimedes. He left many works of a scien
tific character, — treatises on the quadrature of the para
bola, on equilibrium and the centres of gravity, on spirals
and spheroids and conoids, on the possibility of numbering
even the sands on the seashore, — a treatise in which he is
said to have anticipated the modern method of logarithms,
— and particularly on the sphere and cylinder, his dis
covery of the precise ratios of which to each other, he
evidently regarded as the master-work of his life, when
he selected these emblems for that forgotten tombstone
which Cicero searched for and found.
All these writings, however, were in the cause of pure,
abstract, unapplied science ; and had his labors ended
here, his name would have had little claim to the rever
ence of a Mechanic Association, and his character and
career would have had still less interest for a general
audience. It was by the application of science to art,—
it was by the conversion of the results of his profound
investigations and marvelous inventions to the direct

11
advantage of his fellow-men, and to the immediate ad
vancement of his country's welfare, that he earned his
chief title to be remembered with admiration and grat
itude by the great mass of mankind.
It must be acknowledged, however, at the outset, that
there is too much reason for supposing, that most of what
he did in this way was prompted by but little feeling
of personal respect for anything of practical art, and by
but little original impulse of philanthropy. He lived at
a day when it was not thought quite consistent with the
dignity of a philosopher to busy himself with any of the
common affairs or common interests of society. Plutarch
tells us, that " the first that turned their thoughts to
Mechanics, a branch of knowledge which came after
wards to be so much admired, were Eudoxus and
Archytas, who thus gave a variety and an agreeable
turn to Geometry, and confirmed certain problems by
sensible experiments and the use of instruments, which
could not be demonstrated in the way of theorem."
" But," he adds, " when Plato inveighed against them
with great indignation, as corrupting and debasing the
excellence of Geometry, by making her descend from
incorporeal and intellectual to corporeal and sensible
things, and by thus obliging her to make use of matter,
which requires much manual labor and is the object of
servile trades, then Mechanics were separated from
Geometry, and being a long time despised by the philos
ophers, were considered only as a branch of the military
art." In another place, in speaking of some of the great
machines which Archimedes invented, he says, — "Yet
Archimedes had such a depth of understanding, such a
dignity of sentiment, and so copious a fund of mathe
matical knowledge, that though in the invention of these
machines he gained the reputation of a man endowed
with divine rather than human knowledge, yet he did not

12
vouchsafe to leave behind him any account of them in
writing. For he considered all attention to Mechanics,
and every art that ministers to common uses, as mean and
sordid, and placed his whole delight in those intellectual
speculations, which, without any relation to the necessi
ties of life, have an intrinsic excellence arising from truth
and demonstration only."
The old Greek biographer, indeed, seems disposed even
to apologize for the great Geometrician, by representing
him, in his mechanical inventions, as yielding reluctantly
to the importunity of his royal relative. " He did not
think the inventing of them (says he) an object worthy
of his serious studies, but only reckoned them among the
amusements of Geometry. Nor had he gone so far, but
at the pressing instance of King Hiero, who entreated
him to turn his art from abstracted notions to matters of
sense, and to make his reasonings more intelligible to the
generality of mankind by applying them to the uses of
common life."
Thus, according to Plutarch's account, it is King
Hiero, who deserves the credit of having originally
prompted that "application of Science to Art," which is
to be the subject of your Lectures, and which is the
great secret and source of the wonderful inventions and
improvements of modern times. And a brave and noble
fellow this Hiero certainly was, — Hiero the Second, King
of Syracuse, — who, during a reign of more than half a
century, devoted himself to promoting the arts of peace,
adorning the city over which he reigned with numberless
works of public utility as well as of great magnificence,
while he ruled his people with an almost republican
simplicity, and with much of the substance, and not a
few of the forms, of a free constitutional government.
A modern commentator on the character of Archim
edes* seems to think that Plutarch "confounded the

* Professor Donkin of Oxford.

13
application of geometry to mechanics with the solution
of geometrical problems by mechanical means," and that
he is mistaken in representing Archimedes as despising
all mechanical contrivances and practical inventions. I
would gladly believe that this is a true theory, but I
confess to a good deal of distrust for these corrections of
history eighteen hundred years after it was written, and
in regard to points, too, upon which no new facts or new
testimony have been, or can be, procured.
But whatever may have been the circumstances under
which Archimedes originally turned his mind and his
hand to mechanical inventions, and in whatever estima
tion he may himself have held the practical arts and
sciences, the noble use to which he afterwards applied
them, no less than the wonderful effects which he after
wards produced with them, will be enough to secure him
an everlasting remembrance among men.
There is no more characteristic anecdote of this great
philosopher, than that relating lo his detection of a fraud
in the composition of the royal crown. Nothing, cer
tainly, could more vividly illustrate the ingenuity, the
enthusiasm, and the complete concentration and abstrac
tion of mind with which he pursued whatever problem
was proposed to him.
King Hiero, or his son Gelon, it seems, had given out
a certain amount of gold to be made into a crown, and
the workman to whom it had been intrusted, had at last
brought back a crown of corresponding weight. But a
suspicion arose that it had been alloyed with silver, and
Archimedes was applied to by the King, either to disprove
or to verify the allegation. The great problem, of course,
was to ascertain the precise bulk of the crown in its
existing form ; for gold being so much heavier than silver,
it is obvious that if the weight had been in any degree
made up by the substitution of silver, the bulk would be
proportionately increased. Now it happened that Archim-

14
edes went to take a bath, while this problem was exer
cising his mind, and, on approaching the bath-tub, he
found it full to the very brim. It instantly occurred to
him, that a quantity of water of the same bulk with his
own body must be displaced before his body could be
immersed. Accordingly, he plunged in ; and while the
process of displacement was going on, and the water was
running out, the idea suggested itself to him, that by
putting a lump of gold of the exact weight of the crown
into a vessel full of water, and then measuring the water
which was displaced by it, and by afterwards putting the
crown itself into the same vessel after it had again been
filled, and then measuring the water which this, too,
should have displaced, the difference in their respective
bulks, however minute, would be at once detected, and
the fraud exposed. " As soon as he had hit upon this
method of detection, (we are told,) he did not wait a
moment, but jumped joyfully out of the bath, and run
ning naked towards his own house, called out with a
loud voice that he had found what he had sought. For,
as he run, he called out in Greek, ' Eureka, Eureka.' "
No wonder that this veteran Geometer, rushing through
the thronged and splendid streets of Syracuse, naked as
a pair of his own compasses, and making the welkin
ring with his triumphant shouts,— no wonder that he
should have rendered the phrase, if not the guise, in
which he announced his success, familiar to all the world,
and that "Eureka, Eureka," should thus have become
the proverbial ejaculation of successful invention and
discovery in all ages and in all languages from that day
to this !
The solution of this problem is supposed to have led
the old philosopher not merely into this ecstatical exhibi
tion of himself, but into that entire line of hydrostatical
investigation and experiment, which afterwards secured
him such lasting renown. And thus the accidents of a

15
defective crown and an overflowing bath-tub, gave occa
sion to some of the most remarkable demonstrations of
ancient science.
At the instigation and under the auspices of this same
King Hiero, Archimedes achieved another of his memora
ble triumphs, in the building of a ship of wonderful
dimensions, far exceeding anything which had ever before
been constructed; and which, if the accounts of its
magnitude and its magnificence, — of its banqueting
rooms, and galleries, and stables, — its baths, its fish
ponds, its temple of Venus, and its floors inlaid with
scenes from Homer's Iliad, — be not greatly exaggerated,
must have been a perfect floating city of itself, and must
have been more than a match, in splendor and in size, if
not in speed, even for the Great Republic of our worthy
friend and fellow-citizen, Donald McKay.*
One might imagine that it was from the accounts
which have come down to us of this marvelous vessel,
that Shakspeare, — who, though he is said to have " had
small Latin and less Greek," yet always contrived to pick
up whatever either Greek or Latin authors contained
which could serve his turn and adorn his story or his
style, — must have derived the idea of that gorgeous bark
in which he represents Cleopatra — the serpent of old
Nile — sailing down the Cydnus to make captive of the
valiant but voluptuous Anthony :
"The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne,
Burned on the water ; the poop was beaten gold;
Purple the saUs, and so perfumed, that
The winds were love-sick with them j the oars were silver,
Which to the time of flutes kept stroke."

* WhUe this Lecture is going through the press, the telegraph informs
ns that the Great Republic has been burned to the water's edge at New
York. Every one will sympathize with Donald McKay in this sad dis
appointment, and wiU deeply regret that so noble a specimen of naval
architecture should have met with so untimely a fate.

16
It seems to have been discovered too late, however,
that Sicily had no harbor large enough for the permanent
accommodation of this stupendous structure,— although
Syracuse itself was famous for its capacious port, in
which, even as late as the year 1798, ages after it had
been supposed to be irrecoverably choked up with sand,
the heroic Nelson, on his way to the glories of the Nile,
found a safe and ample anchorage for a whole fleet of
British frigates and ships of war, — watering his ships, in
the meantime, at the fountain of Arethusa, and writing
to a friend that that alone was an ample recipe for
victory. At any rate, on this account or some other, this
huge vessel was sent off as a present to Ptolemy, King of
Egypt, laden with corn enough to supply almost the
whole demand of an immediate national scarcity. Now,
one of the Ptolemies is said to have had a ship (280
cubits) 420 feet long, and (48 cubits) 72 feet deep,
which is nearly 100 feet longer and 33 feet deeper than
the Great Republic, and which required four thousand
four hundred rowers and other mariners, and was capable
of accommodating three thousand soldiers besides — a ship
which the great historian Gibbon, in one of his notes,
quotes Dr. Arbuthnot as having estimated at four and a
half times the tonnage of an English hundred-gun ship!
If the ship which Archimedes built was larger and more
capacious still, as, under the circumstances, must be pre
sumed, he may fairly be set down as having outdone even
the foremost and most adventurous of our East Boston
shipbuilders, in the construction of these monsters of the
deep ; notwithstanding the recent suggestion that Donald
McKay can be nothing less than a lineal descendant of
the great Ark-builder, father Noah himself.
It must be remembered, however, that there was no
ocean navigation in those days to try the strength of her
hull, or test the stiffness of her ribs, and that rowing
her across the Mediterranean was a very different thing

17
from giving her to the breeze upon the broad Atlantic.
Even for the short voyages of that day, the charming
Roman Lyric tells us that there was no great confidence
to be placed in these painted and ornamented ships;
and I imagine there is very little doubt which of the
two vessels any of us would prefer for a voyage to
Canton or San Francisco, or even for a trip to Dover.
It must not be forgotten, either, that the Sicilian ship
did not obey the magic voice of its master builder, as
the Great Republic did in the sight of us all in her late
majestic and sublime descent into her destined element,
with all her bravery on and streamers waving ; — but
required, we are told, the aid of a powerful and pon
derous screw, which Archimedes was obliged to invent,
and did invent, for the express purpose of launching
her. But this was not the only screw which Archimedes
invented. You are all acquainted with another which
bears his name to this day, which, I believe, is often
called the water-snail, — and which is sometimes said to
have been originally contrived for pumping water out of
the hold of this same gigantic ship, aud by others as
having been invented by him, while in Egypt, for raising
the waters of the Nile to irrigate the lands which were
above the reach of the river.
It would occupy too much of my time to enter into
any detailed account or enumeration of all the inventions
which are ascribed to this wonderful man. Nothing
seems to have been above or below the reach of his
inventive faculties, from a Chinese puzzle to exercise the
ingenuity of children, to an orrery illustrating the move
ments of the heavenly orbs. Nothing seems to have been
too difficult for his accomplishment, from an hydraulic
organ,— producing music, I dare say, almost as dehghtful
in that day, as can be drawn by any of the fair fingers
3

18
before me from one of your President's* grand piano fortes
in this,— to that amazing combination of ropes and wheels ''
and piilleys, by means of which, with a slight motion of
his hand at the end of a machine which he had contrived
for the purpose, he is said to have drawn towards himself,
from a considerable distance and upon the dry land, one
of the largest of the King's galleys, fully manned and
fully laden, in as smooth and gentle a manner as if she
had been under sail upon the sea !
It was this last achievement which induced the aston
ished Hiero to intercede with the philosopher to prepare
for him a number of engines and machines which might
be used either for attack or defence in case of a siege.
Hiero, it seems, thus early adopted the prudent maxim
of our own Washington, " In peace, prepare for war."
Like Washington, however, he maintained always a
pacific and paternal policy, and he finished a reign of
almost unequaled duration, without having been obliged
to resort to the marvelous enginery with which Archim
edes was prevailed upon to provide him.
But the time at length came round, when Syracuse
was to need that enginery ; and fortunately the old
engineer was himself alive and at hand, to superintend
and direct its application.
Old Hiero died at ninety years of age, after a reign of
fifty-four years. He had made peace with the Romans
and become their ally, soon after his accession, and he
resolutely adhered to them until his death. His son
Gelon had died before him, and he was, therefore,
succeeded on the throne by his grandson, Hieronymus,
a boy of fifteen years of age, who was flattered and
seduced by the emissaries of Hannibal into an alliance

19
with the Carthaginians. He was soon after basely
assassinated by a band of conspirators in the Roman
interest, and with him the whole race of Hiero was
exterminated. A reaction in favor of the Carthaginian
alliance having been the natural consequence of this
atrocious massacre, Syracuse at once became a prey to
foreign influences and entanglements, and suffered all the
evils of a city divided against itself A Roman fleet was
accordingly despatched to turn the scale between the
contending factions, and Marcellus was sent over to Sicily
to assume the supreme command. But the recent cruelty
and barbarity of Marcellus in scourging and beheading,
in cold blood, two thousand of the Roman deserters at
the siege of Leontini, had roused up all the friends of
Rome in Syracuse against him, and they absolutely
refused to acknowledge his authority, or even to admit
him into the city.
Thence arose that last and most famous siege of Syra
cuse, — a siege carried on both by land and sea, — rMar-
cellus commanding the fleet, and Appius Claudius the
army. The Roman army was large and powerful, invin
cible and irresistible, as it was supposed, by any force
which Syracuse could furnish, whether Carthaginian or
Sicilian. It was flushed, too, by recent victory, being
fresh from storming the walls of Leontini, which it had
accomplished as easily — (to borrow Dr. Arnold's Homeric
comparison) — "as easily as a child tramples out the
towers and castles which he has scratched upon the sand
of the sea-shore."
" But at Syracuse, (continues this admirable historian
and excellent man, whose description could not be
mended,) it was checked by an artillery such as the
Romans had never encountered before, and which, had
Hannibal possessed it, would long since have enabled
him to bring the war to a triumphant issue. An old man
of seventy-four, a relation and friend of King Hiero, long

20
known as one of the ablest astronomers and mathema
ticians of his age, now proved that his science was no less
practical than deep ; and amid all the crimes and violence
of contending factions, he alone won the pure glory of
defending his country successfully against a foreign
enemy. This old man was Archimedes.
"Many years before, he had contrived the engines which
were now used so effectively. Marcellus brought up his
ships against the sea-wall of Achradina, and endeavored
by a constant discharge of stones and arrows to clear the
walls of their defenders, so that his men might apply
their ladders, and mount to the assault. These ladders
rested on two ships lashed together, broadside to broad
side, and worked as one by their outside oars ; and when
the two ships were brought close up under the wall, one
end of the ladder was raised by ropes .passing through
blocks affixed to the two mastheads of the two vessels,
and was then let go, till it rested on the top of the wall.
But Archimedes had supplied the ramparts with an artil
lery so powerful that it overwhelmed the Romans before
they could get within the range which their missiles
could reach ; and when they came closer, they found all
the lower part of the wall was loopholed ; and their men
were struck down with fatal aim by an enemy they could
not see, and who shot his arrows in perfect security. If
they still persevered and attempted to fix their ladders,
on a sudden they saw long poles thrust out from the top
of the wall like the arms of a giant ; and enormous
stones, or huge masses of lead, were dropped upon them,
by which their ladders were crushed to pieces, and their
ships were almost sunk. At other times, machines like
cranes, or such as are used at the turnpikes in Germany,
and in the market gardens round London, to draw water,
were thrust out over the wall ; and the end of the lever,
with an iron grapple afiixed to it, was lowered upon the
Roman ships. As soon as the grapple had taken hold,

21
the other end of the lever was lowered by heavy weights,
and the ship raised out of water, till it was made almost
to stand upon its stern ; then the grapple was suddenly
let go, and the ship dropped into the sea with a violence
which either upset it or filled it with water. With equal
power was the assault on the landside repelled ; and the
Roman soldiers, bold as they were, were so daunted by
these strange and irresistible devices, that if they saw so
much as a rope or a stick hanging or projecting from the
wall, they would turn about and run away, crying, ' that
Archimedes was going to set one of his engines at work
against them.' Their attempts, indeed, were a mere
amusement to the enemy, till Marcellus in despair put
a stop to his attacks ; and it was resolved merely to
blockade the town, and to wait for the eflect of /amwe
upon the crowded population within."*
Plutarch represents Marcellus, in this strait, as laughing
outright at his own artillerymen and engineers, and as
exclaiming, " Why do we not leave off contending with
this mathematical Briareus, who, sitting on the shore, and
acting as it were but in jest, has shamefully baffled our
naval assault ; and in striking us with such a multitude
of bolts at once, exceeds even the hundred-handed giants
in the fable ? " And, in truth, (adds the old Greek
biographer,) all the rest of the Syracusans were no more
than the body in the batteries of Archimedes, while he
himself was the informing soul. All other weapons lay
idle and unemployed ; his were the only offensive and
defensive arms of the city.
That, Mr. President, was the application of science to
art with a witness to it, and in the noblest of all causes,
the defence of one's country. That was an illustration
of the one man power which has never been surpassed, if
ever equaled, since the world began. I know of ievr
* Arnold's History of Rome, vol. iii. chap. 45.

22
things, certainly, more sublime, in the history of human
actions, than the spectacle of this old patriot mathemati
cian and mechanic holding Marcellus and the Roman
power at bay by his single arm, and saving his native
city so long by his unaided and overwhelming genius.
It reminds one of nothing so much as of Milton's mag
nificent description of the heroic, renowned, irresistible
Samson, as he calls him in the Agonistes, who
" Ban on embattled armies clad in iron ;
And, weaponless himself,
Made arms ridiculous, useless the forgery
Of brazen shield and spear, the hammered cuirass,
Chalibean-tempered steel, and frock of mail
Adamantean proof.
But safest he who stood aloof,
When insupportably his foot advanced,
In scorn of their proud arms and warlike tools.
Spumed them to death by troops. The bold Ascalonite
Pled from his lion ramp ; old warriors turned
Their plated backs under his heel ;
Or, groveling, soiled their crested helmets in the dust."
Samson's, however, you all remember, was mere physi
cal strength, mere brute force, which, though it could
defy a thousand swords and spears, yielded ingloriously
at last to a single pair of scissors ; while that of Archim
edes was the surpassing and almost superhuman power of
intellect, overcoming all physical forces, and rendering
them subservient and tributary to its own mighty will.
And now, who can remember this incomparable service
which Archimedes rendered to his native city in the hour
of its utmost peril, and then reflect uponthe oblivion into
which his tomb and almost his name seem so soon to
have fallen,— even among the magistrates of Syracuse in
Cicero's time,— without recalling that touching lesson
upon human vanity and human ingratitude which has
been left us by the Royal Preacher on the pages of Holy
Writ ? One would almost imagine that Solomon was a

23
prophet, as well as a preacher and a poet, and was per
mitted to look forward, through the mist of eight cen
turies, to the very scene we have been witnessing :
"There was a little city, (says he,) and few men
within it ; and there came a great King against it, and
besieged it, and built great bulwarks against it :
" Now there was found in it a poor wise man, and he
by his wisdom delivered the city; yet no man remem
bered that same poor man.
" Then, said I, wisdom is better than strength ;
wisdom is better than weapons of war ; nevertheless
the poor man's wisdom is despised, and his words are
not heard."
There is some confusion of dates in this part of Sicilian
and Roman history ; but it is calculated that a full year, at
the very least, and perhaps two or even three years, elapsed,
before Marcellus succeeded in overcoming the countless
expedients of Archimedes, and in getting Syracuse into
his possession. Among other marvelous means which
the old philosopher is said to have employed to avert this
catastrophe, was a combination of mirrors in the nature
of burning glasses, by which ships were set on fire at the
distance of a bowshot from the walls. Some doubt has
been thrown upon this story, and it has given occasion
to a great deal of philosophical experiment and contro
versy. The celebrated naturalist, Buffon, however, has
abundantly proved that there was nothing impossible
about it, having himself succeeded in " igniting wood at
a distance of one hundred and fifty feet by means of a
combination of one hundred and forty-eight plane mirrors,"
and having, according to another account, by a combina
tion of four hundred small mirrors, melted lead at the
distance of one hundred and twenty feet, and set fire to a
haystack at a much greater distance. And, after all, the
account is not a whit more incredible at first view, than
the recent experiment of Professor Faraday, who succeeded

24
in igniting gunpowder, by rays of the sun, transmitted
through a lens of Wenham ice. Our friend. Sir Charles
Lyell, is particular in telling us that it was Wenham ice
which ignited the British gunpowder, and that British
ice had too much salt, and too many bubbles in it, for a
successful experiment.*
Syracuse was at last taken, and amid the general car
nage by which the sack was attended, Archimedes was
slain. The accounts of his death are not entirely uni
form, but the most commonly received version is, that
being engaged in some mathematical investigations, either
in his own study or in the market-place, he was so
absorbed by his calculations, that not even the tumult
uous shouts of the Romans, rushing in triumph through
the walls, awakened him to a realizing sense thaj the
city was at length captured. Under these circumstances,
a Roman soldier suddenly approached him, and ordered
him to follow him to Marcellus. " Disturb not my circle,"
exclaimed the old philosopher. " Hold off for a moment,
till I have finished my problem." But the soldier, in a
fury, having no respect either for him or his theorem,
drew his sword, and laid him dead at his feet. Marcellus,
it is said, had given orders that his life should be spared, —
perhaps, that he might be seen marching behind his
chariot wheels, among the captives, in the triumphal pro
cession at Rome, — or, perhaps, it may have been, out of
real regard for his scientific genius and celebrity. He is
said, even, to have bestowed some favors upon the phi
losopher's relatives out of respect to his memory. But
Dr. Arnold well observes, that "the Roman soldier's
sword dealt kindly with Archimedes, in cutting short his
scanty term of remaining life, and saving him from be
holding the misery of his country."
Little now remains of the ancient city of Syracuse,
once so celebrated for her wealth and luxury and learning
" LyeU's Second Visit to the United States, chapter xl.

25
and art, — which was able, at different periods of her
history, to contend against the whole power of Athens,
of Carthage, and of Rome, and which, in its victory
over the Athenian fleet, two hundred years before, had
" settled the fate of the whole western world." Not even
a table to write upon, or a chair to sit upon, could be
conveniently found there by a most agreeable tourist in
1770. Of its vast ruins, once covering a space of thirty
miles in circumference, but a few imperfect fragments
can now be traced. Its celebrated fountain of Arethusa,
associated, in the mind of the scholar, with so much of
the rich romance of ancient poetry, has become turbid
and muddy, and is only resorted to as a place for washing
the clothes of the poor. But the name of that wonderful
mathematician and mechanic will make the place of his
birth and the scene of his experiments and his exploits
memorable throughout all ages and all lands, — even when
the tyranny of Dionysius and the patriotism of Timoleon
shall have been alike forgotten. The ever-burning ^Etna
itself, in whose awful presence he lived, and whose
mighty energies he seems to have emulated in that
memorable siege, may sooner cease to roll up its volumes
of smoke and flame to the skies, than the name of
Archimedes, — now that it has been transplanted to
another hemisphere, and taken in special charge by the
mechanics of a new world, — shall cease to be remem
bered and cherished.
What might not such a man have accomplished, had
he enjoyed this new hemisphere, with all its boundless
opportunities and advantages, as his scene of action !
You all remember his striking exclamation — "Give me
a place to stand upon, and I will move the world!"
That was the expression of a man, who felt that his
sphere was too limited for his powers, and who panted
for a wider field upon which to display his genius.
If he ever spoke with contempt of the practical arts, it
4

26
could only have been because he saw how little room
for them there was in the narrow circuit to which his
life and labors were confined. It required a world-wide
theatre for the great mechanical inventions which char
acterize our age. It needed ocean navigation — it needed
the navigation of vast inland seas and of rivers thousands
of miles long, to afford the stage and the stimulus for
the experiments and the enterprise which led to the
invention of steamboats. It needed the magnificent
distances of modern intercommunication, and especially
of our own American Union, to give full scope for the
Railroad and the Telegraph. Above all, it needed a state
of society and of government in which industry should
no longer be the badge of servitude, — in which it should
no longer be thought inconsistent with the dignity of a
philosopher to busy himself with the common affairs and
common interests of life, and in which the laboring mil
lions should be lifted up — let me rather say, should lift
themselves up, as they have done — to the assertion and
enjoyment of the cornmon and equal rights of humanity,
— it needed all this to give occasion and inducement to
those wonderful improvements and inventions of every
sort, of which the chief benefit and blessing has been
manifested in improving the condition, and muUiplying
so incalculably the comforts, of the great masses of
mankind. Necessity is the mother of invention, and
there was little or no necessity of that sort in Syracuse.
But everything for which a demand existed, Archimedes
seemed able to supply, and actually did supply.
It was not reserved for him to find a place for doing
more. It was not his destiny to discover the fulcrum,
by poising his mighty lever upon which, the world, as
he knew it, could be moved. But sixteen hundred years
afterwards, at the head of the very gulf on which Sicily
stands, and within but a few days' sail of Syracuse, the
man was born, to whom that lofty destiny was vouch-

27
safed. Columbus, a native of Genoa, discovered the
New World, and the Old World has been moving ever
since. And it is not too much to say, that this motion
has been in great measure produced by those very me
chanical discoveries and inventions of which Archimedes
was the original designer, and by that application of
science to art of which he furnished the first signal and
successful example.
I may not prolong this discourse by dwelling upon
that long series of discoverers and inventors and men of
science and mechanics, in the old world 'or in the new,
by whom the practical and useful arts have been ad
vanced to their present state of perfection. Our own
land has had its full share of them. Their names are
known to you by heart. Some of them have lived,
some of them are yet living, in our midst.
But there is time enough still left to me, I am sure,
to allude briefly to at least one of them, long since dead,
— who, if wide distinctions and differences in his con
dition and pursuits, forbid me from calling him the
American Archimedes, may well be compared with that
wonderful man in the services which he rendered to art,
to science and to his country, — and whose memory, at
this moment, has at least one thing in common with that
of the great Syracusan, which, I trust, for the honor of
his native country, and his native city, will not be of
much longer continuance.
If any of you, my friends, as you happen to be passing
down Hanover street, in this good city of Boston, on
some pleasant morning, will pause for a moment on the
side-walk of the First Baptist Church, and cast your eyes
over to the right hand side of the street, you will per
ceive, suspended from a sort of crane, smaller, but perhaps
not altogether unlike those which Archimedes thrust out
from the walls of Syracuse to swamp the' Roman ships,
and projecting from the building which forms the upper

28
corner of Hanover and Union streets, — a building in
which may be found India Rubbers on the lower story
and Daguerreotypes up stairs, (two articles which were
utterly unknown to commerce or to art in the days to
which I am about to allude)— you will perceive, I say,—
a wooden ball, about as large as a good-sized cocoa nut
or a small-sized water melon ; and upon this ball, from
which a part of the gilding has been already cracked and
from which the rest seems rapidly peeling, you may
discern without difficulty the date of 1698, legibly
inscribed on both sides of it. How this precise date
came there, it is not easy to tell ; at least I have never
met with the explanation.* But there is another inscrip
tion on the ball, and there are other well authenticated
circumstances associated with it, which render it one of
the most precious memorials, — which ought, certainly,
to render it one of the most cherished relics, — of our city
in the olden time.
There, in the year 1716, might have been seen a pre
cocious and rather roguish boy, of about ten years of age,
unwillingly but dihgently employed in cutting wicks and
filling moulds for the commoner sort of candles,— a hum
ble occupation enough, but one not a little significant of
the light which he was himself about to shed upon his
country and upon mankind in after years. Born in
Boston, on the 6th day of January, old style, or the 17th
of January as we now call it, in the year 1706, in an old-
fashioned gable-end house near the head of Milk street,
opposite the Old South Church, in which he was chris
tened the very same morning,— born in that well-remem
bered mansion, which, were it still standing, would be
visited one of these days, if not now, with hardly less
interest than that with which pilgrims from every land
are found flocking to the humble birth-place of the great

^^^t:i\^ry,^';2r^p^:^^'':,^^^ "''' ^^^=«*^' *^^ ^'^""^

29
British bard at Stratford-upon-Avon,— the son of poor,
but honest, industrious and pious parents, and having
only been permitted to enjoy two years of schooling, one
of them at the common grammar school of the town, and
the other at a private school for writing and arithmetic,
the little fellow had been taken away thus early from his
books and his play, to help along his father in his busi
ness, — which was that of a tallow-chandler and soap
boiler. And that father's name may still be decyphered
beneath the torn and tarnished gilding on the ball to
which I have alluded. Tradition tells us that it was
originally a blue ball, and that it was at one time the
sign of a public house.
At the sign of the blue ball, that boy remained assisting
his father for two years, and there was every appearance
that he was destined for a tallow-chandler himself. But
there was that in his nature, which could not be content
with the daily drudgery of this somewhat unsavory
calling. There was that within him, which seemed to
whisper in his youthful ear, as Archimedes declared aloud
in his maturer manhood, that if he could only find a place
to stand upon, he, too, could move the world. And this
dissatisfaction with his condition, at length manifested
itself so distinctly and in so many ways, that his father
had good cause to apprehend, that if a more agreeable
and congenial occupation were not soon provided for him,
he would break loose from parental control and go off to
sea, as one of his brothers had done before him.
And so, he was next destined by his well-meaning
parents for a cutler's trade, and his wits were to be em
ployed in making edge-tools for others, in order to prevent
him from doing what young America, I believe, sometimes
calls 'cutting stick' himself. But fortunately, perhaps,
for all concerned, the fee demanded for an apprenticeship
in that craft was too considerable for his father's purse,
and the cutler's trade was never entered upon.

30
An occupation, which in its incidental opportunities and
advantages, at least, was better suited to his peculiar taste
and talents, at last offered itself; and he may now be
seen regularly indented and bound over as a printer's
apprentice till he should be twenty-one years of age, with
what was doubtless deemed a most important and liberal
stipulation in the covenant,— that for the last year of the
term, he should be allowed journeyman's wages. No
doubt he was the envy of all the young apprentices in his
neighborhood, and considered as made for life, with such
a rich remuneration in prospect. Under that indenture
he remained steady and diligent for five years out of the
nine which it covered, — working hard at the press during
the day, and making the most of the leisure hours of the
evening, and of the later hours of the night, too, in
improving his handwriting, in practising composition, and
in reading the books which accident brought within his
veach,— and, fortunately for him and for us all, these were
among the very best books which the world afforded —
Plutarch, Bunyan, Defoe, and Addison.
But the yearning for a wider sphere could only be
temporarily repressed by a condition like this, and indeed
it was daily acquiring fresh impulse and increased energy
from the very circumstances by which he was surrounded.
The very last thing in the world for taming down a
quick, earnest, inquiring and ambitious mind, conscious
of its own power and its own superiority, — conscious,
too, that its godlike capabilities were never meant to rust
away unused, — the very last way in the world for reduc
ing such a mind as this, into subjection to the discipUne
and drudgery of an indented apprenticeship, is to bring it
into acquaintance and contact with that mighty mechani
cal engine, by which, more than by any other which has
ever yet been known, either to ancient or to modern art,
the old idea of Archimedes has been fulfilled and the
world moved. If such a mind is to be kept under, let it

31
busy itself with any other mystery beneath the sun,
rather than with the mystery of the composing stick,
more especially when it is employed in the service of a
newspaper. There is an atmosphere in a printer's office,
which, some how or other, puts notions into boys' heads,
and into men's heads, too, — an atmosphere which is very
apt to make quick blood run quicker, and impulsive
hearts beat higher, and active brains work harder, until
those who were only indented to set up types for other
people's thoughts, are suddenly found insisting on having
other people to set up types for their own thoughts.
So it has been, certainly, with more than one of your
own most distinguished members, Mr. President, — your
Russell, your Armstrong, and your Buckingham, the latter
of whom has recently added a new claim to your regard,
and to the regard of the community, by the preparation of
an elaborate and excellent history of your Association.*
And so, certainly, it was with our young Boston prin
ter's boy of 1718, whom not even journeyman's wages
for the ninth year could tempt to serve out his time in
mere type setting, and who even before the fifth year was
fairly ended, availed himself of a tempting opportunity
once more to assert his freedom, fled from his employer
and family and native town, and who might have been
seen, sometime in the year 1723, leaping ashore from on
board of a little sloop at New York, a lad of only seven
teen years old, without the least knowledge of any person
in the place, and with very little money in his pocket.
A few days afterwards he is found buying threepence
worth of rolls out of a baker's shop in Philadelphia, and
paying for them out of his last dollar, eating one of them
himself from very hunger as he walked along Chestnut
street, and washing it down with a draught of river water,
giving the others to a poor woman and child whom he
* Annals of the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association, by
Joseph T. Buckingham, 1853.

32
had met along the road, and at last finding his way into
a Gluaker meeting-house, and there falling asleep from
utter fatigue and exhaustion ;— a runaway apprentice,
who might have been seized under the fugitive act, if
such an act had existed in those days !
Thus ended the career of Benjamin Fkanklin in his
native city of Boston, and almost at that very moment,
almost at that early age, and under those unpropitious
and seemingly desperate circumstances, he commenced a
career of well-nigh unequaled usefulness to his fellow
men, and of well-nigh unequaled service and glory to
his country. I am not about to attempt any detailed
sketch of that brilliant career in the little remnant of an
hour's discourse. It is so identified with the history of
his country and of the whole civilized world in the age
in which he lived, that volumes have been, and might
again be, filled, without exhausting either its interest or
its variety. Mr. Sparks has performed a service to the
community, in his edition of Franklin's writings, with a
biography prefixed, second only to that which he has
rendered in the preparation of his noble edition of the
life and writings of Washington. And I am glad to
perceive that one of our younger literary men, lately
connected with the evening press of the city, (Mr. Epes
Sargent,) has brought the life and writings of Franklin
within the reach of every one, in a single volume, just
published, containing almost everything that could be
desired by an ordinary reader.
I have only alluded to that career, this evening, as
presenting some striking circumstances, both of compari
son and of contrast, with that of the great Syracusan
philosopher and mechanic of antiquity, whose history I
have just given you, and from a feeling which impressed
itself upon my mind, on the first glance at the design of
the diploma to which I have alluded, that the figure of
Franklin resting on that old original printing-press of his,

33
which is still to be seen in the patent office at Washington,
might well have formed a counterpart to the figure of
Archimedes resting on his screw. Their names are con
nected with periods of history two thousand years apart,
but they are still, and they will ever be, the names, which
mechanics everywhere, and certainly in our own country,
will remember and cherish, with an interest and a respect,
which no other names in that long, long interval, can ever
be permitted to share.
If Archimedes signalized his early ingenuity in dis
covering the defectiveness of King Hiero's crown, Frank
lin was second to no one in detecting and making mani
fest the defectiveness and worthlessness of all crowns,
for any purposes of American free government.
If Archimedes by his burning mirrors drew down fire
from the sun upon the foes of his country, Franklin
caught the forked lightning upon his magic points, averted
it from the homes of his fellow-men, and conducted it
where it might be safely disarmed of its deadly proper
ties. And, certainly, if Archimedes exhibited a sublime
spectacle, in setting at defiance and holding at bay the
whole power of imperial Rome on sea and on land, by
his marvelous and tremendous enginery, literally laugh
ing a siege to scorn, — Franklin, sending up his kite and
holding his key in a thunder storm, in order to draw
deliberately down upon himself the flaming bolts of
heaven, that he might analyze their character and verify
his theory for the good of mankind, presents a picture of
even greater and nobler sublimity.
Franklin did not, indeed, devote himself to profound
mathematical and geometrical problems and theorems.
He lived in a larger and busier world than Archimedes
ever conceived of, and at a period when the distractions
of an unsettled and uncivilized state of society permitted
but little devotion or attention to philosophy or science
5

34
of any sort. But he was not a whit behind the great
Sicilian in the ingenuity and industry which he dis
played, in devising and preparing the instruments and
engines by which his countrymen were enabled to im
prove their condition in time of peace, and to defend
their soil and their independence in time of war. And I
know not any one in our own history, or in any other
history, who, from the variety and multiplicity of the
improvements, inventions, and practical suggestions, both
for the purposes of peace and of war, of which he was
the author, could so well be likened to that hundred-
handed ^iareus, to whom Marcellus compared the old
philosopher of Sicily, as Benjamin Franklin.
Nothing seemed too lofty, nothing too low, for his
regard. But the great aim of his mind, unlike that of
Archimedes, was undoubtedly that which Lord Mahon in
one of his late volumes ascribes to it ; — " whether in
science and study, or in politics and action, the great aim
of his mind was ever practical utility," — and nothing
could be juster or finer than the remark of Sir Humphrey
Davy, that Franklin sought rather to make philosophy a
useful inmate and servant in the common habitations of
man, than to preserve her merely as an object of admira
tion in temples and palaces.
It is amazing, as we skim over the surface of his career
ever so lightly, to contemplate the number and variety of
his services to his fellow-men in all stations and con
ditions of life, and to reflect how many of our most
valued institutions and establishments, for the welfare
alike of the individual and of the state, were of his orig
inal suggestion and introduction.
See him, as early as 1731, setting on foot at Phila
delphia, the first subscription library on this Continent, at
a time when one of the great obstacles to improvement
was the difficulty of access to books.
See him, the year after, commencing the publication of

35
that earliest serial, Poor Richard's Almanac, which was
to supply the place of so many other books for the spare
minutes of the laboring poor, and filling it with maxims
and proverbs which made it a fountain of wisdom for
every fireside where it found a place, as, indeed, it has
remained to this day.
See him, in the city of his adoption, undertaking the
improvement of the city watch, projecting the establish
ment of the first engine company for the extinguishment
of fires, and soon after submitting a plan for paving, and
cleaning, and lighting the streets.
Follow him a little further, and see him proposing and
establishing the first philosophical society on our Conti
nent, and afterwards laying the foundations of an institu
tion for education, which ultimately grew up into the
University of Pennsylvania.
See him inventing, at one moment, a fireplace, at the
next, a lightning-rod, and at the next, a musical instru
ment making melody which his wife, at least, mistook
for the music of angels.
Behold him, in the meantime, presiding with consum
mate ability and despatch over the Post Office department
of the whole American Colonies, — an office which, con
sidering the inadequacy of the means of communication
within his command, must have required a hundredfold
more of the hundred-handed faculty, than even now,
when its duties aud distances have been so incalculably
multiplied. See him, in time of war, too, or in anticipation of war,
exhibiting the same marvelous facility and many-sided
genius in providing for every exigency and emergency
which the perils of his country might involve. The first
of those volunteer militia companies, which are still among
the best securities for law and order in our crowded cities,
the very first of them, I believe, ever instituted on this
Continent, were instituted under the auspices of Franklin,

36
and he himself was the first colonel of the first volunteer
regiment. The horses and wagojis for the advance of
General Braddock's army could never have been season
ably obtained, if ever obtained at all, but through his
ingenious and indomitable energy, and through the pledge
of his own personal credit ; — and it is a most striking fact,
that he warned that ill-starred commander (but warned
him, alas! in vain) of the precise danger which awaited
him ; that fatal ambuscade of the Indians, by which he
and his forces were so disastrously cut off on the banks
of the Monongahela, and from which our own Washing
ton escaped only as by the miraculous interposition of an
Almighty arm, — escaped so narrowly, and under circum
stances so hopeless, to all human sight, that no one to
this day, can read the story of that imminent peril and
that hair-breadth 'scape, without a holding of the breath,
and an involuntary shudder, at the idea of what might
have been the consequences to our country, if Washing
ton had thus early been lost to her.
Follow Franklin across the ocean. Witness that early
and extraordinary examination which he underwent at
the bar of the British House of Commons in 1766, when
he fairly exhausted the whole subject of the commerce,
the arts, the agriculture, the whole circumstances and
condition of the infant Colonies, and of the views and
feelings and resolute intentions of the colonists, — literally
astonishing the world with the information and wisdom
of his answers, and furnishing in the almost off-hand
replies to ofl'-hand questions, a history, which must be
consulted to this hour, for the best understanding of the
times. Go with him to the bar of the Privy Council, a few
years later, and mark his imperturbable patience and
equanimity under the reproaches and revilings of the
insolent Wedderburn, calling him a thief to his face.
Go with him, a twelvemonth afterwards, to the bar of

37
the House of Lords, and mark the same unmoved com
posure, when the peerless Chatham declares, in his own
presence, that all Europe holds him in high estimation
for his knowledge and wisdom, and ranks him with the
Boyles and Newtons of old England.
Behold him at Court, the shrewd, sagacious and success
ful diplomatist, who, bringing his world-wide reputation as
a philosopher, and his eminent character as a man, to the
aid of his unequaled common sense and practical tact, did
more than even Gates's army by their gallant and glorious
victory at Saratoga, in bringing about that French Alliance
and securing that French assistance, which finally turned
the scale in favor of American Independence. Behold
him signing that Treaty of Alliance and the Treaty of
Amity and Commerce with France in 1778, — signing the
provisional articles and the definitive Treaty of Inde
pendence and Peace with Great Britain in 1782 and 1783,
— signing the Treaties of Amity and Commerce with
Sweden and with Prussia in 1783 and 1785. Review
the whole history of his successes as a minister, and his
reception as a man, in so many foreign courts and by so
many crowned heads, and then tell me if Solomon were
not a prophet in regard to him, as well as in regard to
Archimedes of old, in that memorable proverb, which
Franklin himself tells us, in his admirable autobiography,
that his father, among other instructions to him while a
boy, so frequently repeated in his hearing ; — " Seest thou
a man diligent in his calling, — he shall stand before
kings, he shall not stand before mean men ! "
See him, finally, and above all, as early as 1754, as
a delegate to the Convention at Albany, proposing that
plan of Union among the Colonies, which was ultimately
to become the mightiest engine which mortal wisdom
ever invented for maintaining the freedom, prosperity and
independence of a nation like ours. Franklin was un
doubtedly the original proposer of the Union as we now

38
enjoy it, and Mr. Bancroft has not hesitated to style hira
"the true father ofthe American Union."
His, indeed, was not the first plan of Union ever pro
posed on this Continent. The old primitive Union of the
New England Colonies, more than a hundred years before,
instituted under the auspices of John Winthrop, then
Governor of Massachusetts, and his associates, and of
whose little Congress he was the first President, — that
was the original pattern and model of a political ma
chinery, which has proved more effective than any
combination of pulleys and ropes and wheels which
Archimedes ever devised or ever dreamed of, for rescuing
and defending our country at once from domestic and
from foreign foes, and for propelling our Great Republic
onward — ever onward — in her mighty, matchless career.
But Franklin knew little of our early Colonial history.
He may have known something about William Penn's
plan of Union in 1697, but not enough even of that to
impair his claim as an original proposer of Union in 1754.
And thus it is, that the little Boston boy, who filled
candle-moulds under the Blue Ball at the corner of Union
Street, must have the credit of having first set the golden
ball of Union in motion. And few men, if any man, did
more than he did, to keep that ball rolling on and ou,
until the Declaration of Independence in '76 and the
Constitution of the United States in '89, — of both of
which he was one of the signers and one of the framers,
— attested successively and unmistakably, that it was a
ball and a Revolution, which could never go backwards,
nor ever stop short of a full and perfect consummation.
When this great and glorious consummation was finally
accomplished, Franklin was already older by many years
than Archimedes was at the siege of Syracuse, and his
work of life was finished. Happier than the great Sici
lian philosopher, however, he fell by no hostile hand, and
with no spectacle of his country's captivity and ruin

39
before his eyes. He died, on the contrary, when he
could not, in the course of nature, have expected or
desired to live longer, at the age of 84, and in the confi
dent assurance, which he expressed so characteristically
while the Constitution of the United States was in pro
cess of being signed, that the sun of his country's glory
was a rising and not a setting sun, and was about to
usher in a day-^a long continued day— of prosperity and
true progress, such as the sun in the heavens had never
before shone upon.
Brave, benevolent, wonderful old man ! Well did our
own Congress declare of him, in the resolutions adopted
on his death, on motion of James Madison, that " his
native genius was not more an ornament to human
nature, than his various exertions of it have been pre
cious, to science, to freedom, and to his country." Well,
too, was it, said by that matchless French orator, Mira-
beau, in announcing the event to the National Assembly
of France, which went into mourning on the occasion,
that "antiquity would have raised altars to this mighty
genius, who, to the advantage of mankind, compassing in
his mind the heavens and the earth, was able to restrain
alike thunderbolts and tyrants."
And if a eulogy of later date, long, long after the im
mediate impressions of his life and his loss had passed
away, and when the time had arrived for a cool, deliber
ate and dispassionate judgment upon his abilities and his
acts, his character and his whole career, — if such a
eulogy be appealed to, as more worthy of reliance, — you
may find it in the brief but glowing tribute to Franklin
by Lord Brougham, in his late account of the statesmen
of the times of George III., of which the opening para
graph will be more than enough for this occasion :
"One ofthe most remarkable men, certainly of our
times, as a politician, (says he,) or of any age, as a phi
losopher, was Franklin ; who also stands alone in com-

40
bining together these two characters, the greatest that
man can sustain, — and in this, that having borne the first
part in enlarging science by one of the greatest discov
eries ever made, he bore the second part in founding one
of the greatest empires of the world."
Undoubtedly, Mr. President, it is often a perplexing and
a perilous thing to attempt, as Lord Brougham has here
done, to assign the precise rank upon the scale of merit
and of fame, to which any of the great lights and leaders
of the world may be entitled. Our own country, cer
tainly, has never yet been so unfruitful of such produc
tions, that individual men could be at all times seen
overtopping the level of those around them, and could
be singled out at a glance as surpassing all their cotempo-
raries in the varied elements which enter into a just and
true idea of human greatness. The North and the South,
Virginia and New England, Kentucky, South Carolina,
New York, New Hampshire and Massachusetts, have
more than once in our history been found vying whh
each other for the palm, as having produced the greatest
statesman or the best man. It is a generous rivalry, and,
in some respects, a wholesome one, and we would not
desire to see it altogether extinguished. Our own little
city of Boston, too, though she has often shone, and been
proud to shine, with borrowed rays, — rays A/hich she
would have rejoiced to hold back still longer from their
kindred skies, — has herself given birth to more than one
luminary of no common brilliancy. That city need not
be ashamed to compare calendars with any of its neigh
bors, which, to say nothing of the living, has given birth
in a single generation to a Q,uincy, a Bowdoin, a Knox,
and a Samuel Adams.
But no one, I think, can hesitate, for a moment, to
admit, that while there are others who may be permitted
to compete with Franklin for the title of the Great
American, — a title, which I am sure would, everywhere

41
and with one accord, be awarded', above all others and
before all others, to the incomparable Washington,— that
while others may be permitted to compete with Franklin
for the title of the Great New Englander, — and I would
not anticipate your judgment or the judgment of posterity
upon such a point, — that while others may even be per
mitted to compete with Franklin for the title of the
Great Son of Massachusetts, — there is no one, not one,
who has ever yet been numbered among the native
children of our own metropolis, who can be allowed
to dispute his claim, for an instant, to the proud designa
tion of the Great Bostonian. And if in the lapse of
centuries, and in the providence of God, Boston shall
ever become as Syracuse now is, her temples and her
palaces prostrated in the dust, her fountains a place for the
poor to wash clothes at, and her harbor for the fishermen
to dry nets in, I am by no means sure that she will have
any more effective claim, or any more certain hold, upon
the memory and the respect of a remote and world-wide
posterity, than that which Syracuse now has, — that
within her walls was born and cradled and brought up
to manhood the great Patriot Philosopher and Mechanic
of his age.
And now, my friends, if some one of the renowned
orators or philosophers of the old world, if some British
or European Cicero, — a Brougham or a Macaulay, a
Humboldt or a Guizot, — on coming over to visit this
proud and prosperous Republic of ours, — should happen,
as well he might, to take a Halifax steamer and arrive
first at the birth-place of Franklin, — and if, upon being
waited on by the magistrates of the city, as Cicero of
old was waited upon on his arrival at ancient Syracuse,
with an offer to show him our Yankee lions, — if such
a man, under such circumstances, instead of asking to
be conducted to our temples of education or of religion,
of charity or of liberty, to our Asylums or Athenaeums,
6

42
our aqueducts, our fountains, or our Faneuil Hall, —
should inquire at once, as Cicero inquired, for the monu
ment commemorative of the genius and services of one
so known and honored throughout the world, — of him
who wrested the sceptre from tyrants and the thunder
bolt from the skies, — I think it would not be difficult
to realize something of the embarrassment with which
His Honor the Mayor, or whoever else might be his
conductor, would suggest to the distinguished stranger,
that though Franklin was born in Boston, he did not
exactly die in Boston, — that there was, indeed, a little
painted stone urn, without a name on it, in one of the
side streets, — but that Philadelphia, perhaps, would be
the more appropriate place to inquire at, as he was
understood to have been buried there.
Our distinguished visitor, of course, would acquiesce
in the suggestion ; not, however, I imagine, without
a shrug of astonishment, which French politeness might
conceal, but which John Bull, in the person of my Lord
Brougham, certainly, would be altogether likely to make
quite as manifest as was agreeable. At any rate, he would
postpone further inquiries until he reached Philadelphia,
where he would rely on the satisfaction of paying his
homage at the very grave of the great philosopher.
And now let us imagine him to have reached the
charming metropolis of Pennsylvania, and to have sallied
out, as Cicero did, into the ancient grave-yards in quest
of the tomb, — What, what, would he find there, — if,
indeed, he succeeded in finding anything? Let me
give you the description in the very words in which
I have recently met with it, in one of the leading
religious papers of our land :
"A dilapidated dark slab of stone, at the south-west
corner of Fifth and Arch Streets, Philadelphia, marks
(or did mark a few years ago) the spot where rest the
remains of Benjamin and Deborah Franklin; but you

43
cannot see their grave nor read the inscription without
climbing a high brick wall, in violation of the law. or
without securing a good opportunity and the favor of
the sexton, each of which is said to be attended with
difficulty. So well hidden is this grave, and so little
frequented, that we have known many native Phila-
delphians of men's and women's estate, who could not
direct one to the locality where it may be found."
Is this, Mr. President, a mere parody of Cicero's de
scription of his hunt for the tomb of Archimedes before
the Christian era?— Or is it a genuine and authentic
account of the tomb of Benjamin Franklin in this
nineteenth century ? If it be the latter, as, I am sorry
to say, cannot be doubted, — said I not rightly and justly,
a moment since, that there was at least one thing in
common to the memory of the great Syracusan and
the great Bostonian, which, I trusted, for the honor
of us all, would not be of much longer continuance?
Archimedes had been dead a hundred and thirty-six
years, before Cicero discovered his forgotten tombstone
buried up beneath briars and brambles. Less than half
that time has elapsed since Franklin was summoned to
the skies. He died only five years before this Associa
tion was founded, and, thanks to a kind Providence, not
even all your original members are yet numbered among
the dead. There is at least one of them,* I rejoice to
remember, who may be seen almost every day on
'Change, with a heart as young as the youngest within
these walls, and whose name, inscribed in the second
volume of Webster's Speeches, as a token of the constant
friendship and regard of their illustrious author, will be
preserved as fresh and fragrant with future generations,
as it is with that which has been the immediate witness
of his genial good nature, his fullness of information, and
his untiring obligingness. Sixty-three years only, — less,
* Isaac P. Davis, Esq.

44
by seven, than the allotted term of a single human life,
have thus expired since Franklin's death, — but they have
been enough, it seems, to consign his tomb to dilapidation
and almost to oblivion.
It is true, indeed, and in justice to Franklin himself, I
must not forget it or omit it, that with a native simplicity
and modesty of character, which no compliments or
caresses of the great or the learned, which no distinction
or flattery at home or abroad, could ever corrupt or impair,
this truly great man prescribed, by his own Will, the
plainest and humblest possible memorial for his own
resting-place. " I wish (says he) to be buried by the side of my
wife, if it may be, and that a marble stone, to be made
by Chambers, six feet long and four feet wide, plain,
with only a small moulding round the upper edge, and
this inscription :
'BENJAMIN AND DEBORAH FRANKLIN,
178-,'
to be placed over us both."
It is true, also, that Franklin has left memorials enough
of himself behind him, to render all further commemora
tion on his own account altogether superfluous.
Every lightning-rod is a monument to Franklin, of his
own erection ; and not a flash, which is disarmed by its
magic points, passes to the ground, without a fresh illu
mination of his title to the gratitude of mankind. One
might almost be permitted to borrow the idea of the con
science-stricken king in Shakspeare's Tempest, and to
imagine the thunder, with its deep and dreadful diapason,
pronouncing the name of Franklin, — not, indeed, as a
name of terror, but as a pledge of safety in the storm.
Every penny-stamp, too, is a monument to Franklin,
earned, if not established by himself, as the fruit of his
early labors and his signal success in the organization of

45
our infant post office ;-and no man, I think, can use the
invaluable little implements of modern cheap postage -I
do not mean the stamped envelopes, which are nothing
less than a disgrace to American art and a caricature of
the Father of his country, but the original, separate
stamps,— without rejoicing that, apart from all other ad
vantages of the system, the noble heads of Washington
and Franklin are thus brought daily to our view, and°are
associated in the minds and hearts of the whole people of
the Union, with the unspeakable privilege of a sure and
speedy communication with the absent and the loved.
And here, in our own midst, too, I may add, every
little silver medal distributed annually to the children of
our free schools, is a precious memorial of Franklin ; and
every boy or girl who is incited by the prizes he insti
tuted to higher efforts at distinction in good scholarship
and good behavior, is a living monument to his prudent
and provident consideration for the youth of his native
city. One of the last things which a Boston boy ever
forgets is, that he won and wore a Franklin medal.
There is at least one of them, I know, who would not
exchange the remembrance of that youthful distinction,
for any honor which he has since enjoyed.
And though the larger provision which he made for the
young and needy mechanics of our city has not quite
realized all the advantages which he anticipated, yet the
day is sure to arrive, when Boston and the whole Com
monwealth will reap a rich harvest of public improvement
from the surplus accumulation of the Franklin Mechanic
Fund. Not, then, because Franklin is in any danger of being
forgotten, — not because his memory requires the aid of
bronze or marble to rescue it from oblivion, — ^not because
it is in the power of any of us to increase or extend his
pervading and enduring fame, — but because, in these
days of comraeraoration, it is unjust to ourselves, unjust

46
to our own reputation for a discriminating estimate, and a
generous appreciation of real genius, of true greatness, and
of devoted public service, — do I conclude this Lecture
with the expression of an earnest hope, that the day
may soon come, when it shall cease to be in the power
of any one to say, that the great Patriot Mechanic and
Philosopher of modern times is without a statue or a
monument, either in the city of his burial-place or his
birth-place. The mechanics of Massachusetts, the mechanics of
New England, owe it to themselves to see to it, that this
reproach no longer rests upon our community and our
country. And I know not under what other auspices than
theirs, such a work could be so fitly and so hopefully
undertaken. When the obelisk at Bunker Hill, — doubly
consecrated to us by the memory of those in whose honor
it was erected, and of him whose consummate eloquence
will be forever associated both with its corner-stone and
its cap-stone, — when this noble monument was lingering
in its slow ascent, the mechanics of Massachusetts pro
nounced the word. Let it be finished — and it was finished.
Aud now there is another word for them to speak, and it
will be done. Let them unite, let us all unite, with our
brethren of Philadelphia and of the whole Union, in erect
ing a suitable monument near the grave of Franklin ; —
but let there not fail to be, also, a Statue of our own, on
some appropriate spot of the Old Peninsula which gave
him birth.
I know not of a greater encouragement which could
be given to the cause of Science applied to Art, in which
we are assembled ; I know not of a greater encourage
ment which could be held out to the young apprentices,
to whom we look to carry forward that cause in the
future, and to supply the places of that noble race of
Massachusetts mechanics to which our City, our State,
and our whole Country, have been so greatly indebted,

47
both for laying the foundations, and for building up the
superstructure, not merely of our material edifices, but of
our moral, civil and political institutions ; I know not
of a greater encouragement which could be afforded to
industry, temperance, moderation, frugality, benevolence,
self-denial, self-devotion, and patriotism, in every art,
occupation and condition of life, — than the visible pres
ence, in some conspicuous quarter of our metropolis, of the
venerable figure of Franklin, in that plain, old-fashioned,
long-bodied, Q,uaker-like, coat, with which he will be
forever associated in our minds, and in which he appeared
proudly alike before kings and commoners ; and with that
bland and benevolent countenance, which seems to say
even to the humblest and least hopeful of God's creatures
— " I was once as you are now, — houseless and penniless,
without fortune and without friends, — but never despair,
— be just and fear not, — be sober, be diligent, be frugal,
be faithful, love man and love God, and do your whole
duty to yourself, to your neighbor, and to your country,
in whatever circumstances you are placed, — and you,
also, may do good in your day and generation, — and you,
too, may, haply, leave a name, that shall be remembered
and honored in all ages and throughout all climes ! "

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