noble treatise, will admit of some doubt; for the genius of Franklin was rather scientific than classical.

Mr. Logan died in 1751, at the venerable age of seventy-seven; leaving his library, which he had been fifty years collecting, to the people of Pennsylvania; a monument of his ardour for the promotion of literature.*

It was at this library that during three successive afternoons I enjoyed that calm and pure delight which books afford. But on the fourth I found access denied, and that the librarian had fled from the yellow fever, which spread consternation through the city. Of the fever I may say that it momentarily

*The following extract from Mr. Logan's will cannot fail to interest the curious in literature:

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"In my library, which I have left to the city, of Phila"delphia, for the advancement and facilitating of classical 'learning, are above 100 volumes of authors in folio, all in Greek, with mostly their versions. All the Roman Classics without exception. All the whole Greek Mathematicians, “viz. Archimedes, Euclid, Ptolemy, both his Geography and Almagest, which I had in Greek (with Theon's Commentary in folio, above 700 pages) from my learned friend Fabricius, "who published 14 volumes of his Bibliotheque Grecque in quarto, in which, after he had finished his account of "Ptolemy, on my inquiring of him at Hamburgh in 1772, "how I should find it, having long sought for it in vain "in England; he sent it me out of his own library, telling me

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it was so scarce, that neither prayers nor price could pur"chase it. Besides, there are many of the most valuable "Latin authors, and a great number of modern mathematicians, with all the three editions of Newton, Dr. Wallis, "Halley, &c."

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"JAMES LOGAN."

became more destructive. Sorrow sat on

every brow, and nothing was to be seen but coffins carried through the streets unattended by mourners. Indeed it was not a time to practise modes of sorrow, or adjust the funeral rites; but the multitude thought only of escaping from the pestilence that wasted at noon-day, and walked in darkness.

This was a period to reflect on the vanity of human life, and the mutability of human affairs. Philadelphia, which in the spring was a scene of mirth and riot, was in the summer converted to a sepulchre for the inhabitants. The courts of law were shut, and no subtile lawyer could obtain a client; the door of the tavern was closed, and the drunkard was without strength to lift the bowl to his lips: no theatre invited the idle to behold the mimic monarch strut his hour upon the stage; the dice lay neglected on the gaming-table, nor did the dancing-room re-echo with the steps of the dancer: man was now humbled! Death was whetting his arrows, and the graves were open. All jollity was fled. The hospital-cart moved slowly on where the chariot before had rolled its rapid wheels; and the coffin-makers were either nailing up the coffins of the dead, or giving dreadful note of preparation by framing others for the dying, where lately the mind at ease had poured forth its tranquility in songs; where the loud laugh

had reverberated, and where the animating sound of music had stolen on the ear.-In this scene of consternation, the negroes were the only people who could be prevailed on to assist the dying, and inter those who were no more. Their motive was obvious; they plundered the dead of their effects, and adorned themselves in the spoils of the camp of the King of Terrors. It was remarked to me by a lady of Philadelphia, that the negroes were never so well clad as after the yellow fever.

I had been a week at Philadelphia, without hearing any tidings of my friend the Doctor, when walking one evening past the Franklin'sHead, I recognised him conversing with a stranger in the front room. The physician had arrived only that evening. He had staid six days at Trenton, leading a pleasant, convalescent life; from whence he had written me a letter, which I found afterwards at the post office. We were rejoiced to meet each other, and the better to exchange minds, I accompanied the Doctor into Arch-street, where taking possession of the porch of an abandoned dwelling, we sat conversing till a late hour. The most gloomy imagination cannot conceive a scene more dismal than the street before us: every house was deserted by those who had strength to seek a less baneful atmosphere; unless where parental fondness prevailed over self-love. Nothing was heard

but either the groans of the dying, the lamentations of the survivors, the hammers of the coffin-makers, or the howling of the domestic animals, which those who fled from the pestilence had left behind, in the precipitancy of their flight. A poor cat came to the porch where I was sitting with the Doctor, and demonstrated her joy by the caresses of fondness. An old negro-woman was passing at the same moment with some pepper-pot* on her head. With this we fed the cat that was nearly reduced to a skeleton; and prompted by a desire to know the sentiments of the old negrowoman, we asked her the news. God help us, cried the poor creature, very bad news. Buckra die in heaps. By and bye nobody live to buy pepper-pot, and old black woman die

too.

I would adduce this as a proof, that calamities usually move us as they regard our interest. The negro-woman lamented the ravages of the fever, because it prevented the sale of her pepper-pot.

Finding all business suspended at Philadelphia, and the atmosphere becoming hourly more noisome, we judged it prudent to leave the city without delay; and finding a vessel at the wharfs ready to sail for Charleston, in South Carolina, we agreed for the passage, and put our luggage on board.

*Tripe seasoned with pepper.

Having taken leave of Monsieur Pecquet, whose excellent dinners had enhanced him in the opinion of the Doctor, we on the 22nd of September, 1798, went on board, and bade adieu to Philadelphia, which was become a Golgotha.

The vessel having hauled out into the stream, we weighed with a fair wind, and shaped our course down the serpentine, but beautiful river of the Delaware. Our cabin was elegant, and the fare delicious. I observed the Doctor's eyes brighten at the first dinner we made on board, who expressed to me a hope that we might be a month on the passage, as he wished to eat out the money the captain had charged him.

The first night the man at the helm fell asleep, and the tide hove the vessel into a cornfield, opposite Wilmington; so that when we went upon deck in the morning, we found our situation quite pastoral. We floated again with the flood-tide, and at noon let go our anchor before Newcastle.

It took us two days to clear the Capes. The banks of the Delaware had been extolled to me as the most beautiful in the world; but I thought them inferior to those of the Thames.

We were now at sea, bounding on the waves of the Atlantic. Of our passengers the most agreeable was an old French gentleman from St. Domingo. Monsieur Lartigue, to the most