January 18th, 1825, at Churchtown, near Lancaster. He studied in the laboratories of Playfair, Bunsen, and Liebig. Whilst a student in Marburg he succeeded in extracting ethyl from hydriodic ether, by a process analogous to the ordinary preparation of hydrogen. This splendid discovery, affording as it did so striking a confirmation of Liebig's theory on the constitution of the alcohols and their derivatives, at once arrested the attention of chemists. The discovery of other alcohol-radicals soon followed, and during the investigation a very curious class of compounds came to light. Those compounds, containing zinc united with a hydro-carbon radical, are colourless limpid volatile liquids, which inflame spontaneously in the air. They are among the most extraordinary bodies known to chemists, and have come into use as agents in research. Frankland was for a short time professor of practical chemistry at the college for civil engineers in Putney. In 1851 he went to Manchester, being appointed to fill the chemical chair at Owens' college. In 1857 he was appointed to St. Bartholomew's hospital. He has since been appointed professor of chemistry at the medical college, St. Bartholomew's hospital, and lecturer on chemistry at the Royal Indian military college, Addiscombe. He was elected F.R.S. in 1853. The council of the Royal Society awarded to him a royal medal in 1857, for "Researches on Organic Radicals and Organo-metallic Bodies."—J. A. W.
FRANKLAND, Thomas, born in Lancashire in 1633; died in 1677. He was educated at Brazennose college, Oxford, where he obtained a fellowship. He took orders; but, abandoning the duties of the church, endeavoured to obtain practice in London as a physician, pretending that he had taken a degree in that faculty. The fraud was discovered; he was tried and convicted, and died in the prison of the Fleet. He wrote the "Annals of King James and King Charles I."—J. A., D.
FRANKLIN, Benjamin, the great American statesman and natural philosopher, was born at Boston in New England on the 17th January, 1706. His ancestors were very respectable English freeholders, who had resided on their own property at Ecton in Northamptonshire for three hundred years before the birth of their illustrious descendant. Franklin's father was a dissenter, who in 1685, in order to escape the severity of the laws then in force against religious conventicles, emigrated, as so many others had done, to New England. His wife having died, he married a Miss Folgier, and Benjamin was the youngest child but two in this second family. He was intended for the church, but the boy's inclination did not lean in that direction; and after assisting for some little time in the paternal trade of soap-boiling, his love of books finally landed him in an apprenticeship to a printer, his own brother. Here the child, for he was only twelve years old, began to feel himself a little more at home than he was among the melting-pots, although the hardships he had to undergo from the tyranny of his brother were very great; and here it was that the faculty which he so eminently possessed, of fluency in writing and talking, first became developed. He tells us that it was his practice to take the Spectator; and, after making short hints of the sentiments in each sentence, he would lay them by for a few days, and, then without looking at the book, endeavour to reconstruct the papers, expressing each hint at length, and as fully as it had been expressed before. We find thus early, what afterwards became the great feature of his character, the capability of saying without any trouble just what he wanted to say, a talent which has made him to a remarkable extent a type of the American people. The dissensions with his brother increasing, he determined to escape; and after selling his books to raise a little money, he managed to reach Philadelphia, four hundred miles from home, with scarcely a penny in his pocket, and the experience of only seventeen years in his brain. Nevertheless, by no means discouraged, he soon got into work; and a letter of his to his brother-in-law, Captain Holmes, being accidentally read in the presence of the governor. Sir William Keith, the youth received a visit from him, and was encouraged to commence trade on his own account in Philadelphia. His father disapproved; but being backed by such a great personage, Franklin determined to carry out his scheme, and thinking that he could purchase types and presses to much greater advantage in England, he set sail for that country. He did not find out till he was on board how he had been cheated, and that his noble friend had been much more profuse with his professions than with his money. He had been led to believe that he would get his promised letters of credit and recommendation after the vessel had left the port, and supposing that the governor's secretary had put them in the letter-bag, he thought nothing more about them till he reached the channel. He then picked out what he supposed to belong to him; but he found out afterwards to his surprise that these were not letters from the governor at all, and that he had been shamefully abandoned. His disappointment did not kill his old self-reliance; and we speedily find him occupied as a compositor, lodging in Little Britain, and afterwards in Duke Street, Lincoln's Inn fields, in a room for which he paid eighteenpence per week. During the passage from America he had contracted a friendship with a gentleman named Denham, who appears to have kept up the acquaintanceship after he arrived in England, and who at last proposed to Franklin that he should return to America as his clerk. They accordingly set sail, and in 1726 Franklin found himself once more in Pennsylvania. Denham having died, no resource remained but the old handicraft; and we cannot help remarking what a blessing this possession of a craft was to Franklin. Again and again, he would have sunk without it; but having it, he was secure against all the waywardness of fortune. He worked for some time for his old master; but after a while he was able to enter into business for himself, and was a prosperous man, with steadily increasing means, for ever afterwards. He seems not only to have printed, but to have written a variety of loose things about this time, and even to have plunged, we cannot say head over ears, for the waters were rather shallow, into metaphysics and controversial theology. We catch a glimpse of a pamphlet on predestination, the argument of which is as follows:—"Almost all men at all times, in all ages and countries, have made use of prayer; therefore, if all things are ordained, prayer is ordained; but, as prayer can produce no change in things which are ordained, it is an absurdity. Therefore all things are not ordained." We cannot be surprised, if this was all he could do in metaphysics, that he was disgusted. His genius was evidently not for philosophy, and it was well he soon forsook it for a sphere to which he was better adapted. His industry, while struggling uphill at his trade, was very great. He was at work early and late, and was not above taking home with a wheelbarrow the paper which he had bought. Neither were a few strokes of policy wanting, very characteristic of the man. The opposition printer in the town having printed an address of the assembly to the governor in a coarse, careless manner, Franklin republished it, and sent a copy very neatly got up to each member, thereby securing his election as printer to the house for the following year. In 1730 he married Miss Read; he was engaged to her some time previously, but their love had been allowed to grow cool, until he reflected that he had been unjust, and he then made up the quarrel as a matter of duty. The marriage appears to have been a happy one. Hard-headed and cool as he was, we see that even Franklin could not live without his little world of idealism. Very few men, indeed, achieve greatness without it. Accordingly, Franklin's dream was the possibility, by means of a little scheme of his own, of arriving at what he calls moral perfection; and for years he worked away at his entries and diaries, which, if they did no other good, at least kept alive in him the belief that perfection, realized or unrealized, surely exists. Neither love nor philosophy, however, prevented his getting money; he had already established a successful newspaper, and in 1732 he printed the first Poor Richard's Almanac, the success of which is well known. Promotion began to flow in upon him. He was made clerk of the assembly in 1736; postmaster in 1737; and during the war between Great Britain and France he was instrumental in raising a large body of militia for the defence of the country. By the year 1750 he had acquired an independent fortune, and he was elected to represent the citizens of Philadelphia in the assembly. In 1755 he was called to the councils of the unfortunate General Braddock. There can be no question, that if Franklin's advice had been followed, the disasters of his wretched expedition might have been avoided. A little circumstance which occurred about this time, so strikingly shows the man, that it ought not to be passed over. The chaplain of some of the irregular troops complained that the soldiers would not come to prayers. Franklin gravely advised him to take upon himself the duty of rum-distributor, and to make it known that the daily allowance would be given out before divine service. Of course, every man was in his place; but the best of the joke is, that
