Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: that the opening chapter of our provincial history, which describes the personal career of Penn and his contemporaries?is full of the most remarkable and picturesque incidents of times which certainly were not barren of interest. I shall be content if any one who hears me can be induced to think so. Penn died in 1718, and then it was, as he descended, the victim of misfortune and disappointment, to his grave, that the career of the luckiest man that ever lived?wonderful in his ability, most wonderful in his success, began to unfold itself. Dr. Franklin was twelve years old when William Penn died, and five years later, he rambled to Philadelphia, and from the moment that he came he identified himself with us and ours?our history, our prosperity, our destiny. He is part and a most illustrious part of Pennsylvania history, and I cannot relinquish the hope, that a Pennsylvania man will some day do justice to his yet neglected biography. There are many who have Franklin’s blood in their veins?who share, too, the rich inheritance of his genius, who well can do it. We may contemn and disparage hereditary pride?not the vulgar sentiment called pride of family, but the pride of hereditary talent and patriotism?as we please, it is the fashion of the times to do so; but there is in the succession of talent and virtue something attractive. There is something, at least, picturesque in seeing, as we have seen, one living lineal descendant ofPennsylvania’s first and great philosopher, entrusted by the Nation with the execution of a gigantic scheme of scientific beneficence?measuring from mountain to mountain, and headland to headland, the boundaries of a continent?and another, the close bond of affectionate brotherhood only broken by death, perishing a martyr to science amidst the howling hurr…