she admires as a deep and original thinker, while mistrusting that he has "too good a conceit" of his own theories and abilities; and the "Morals" of Confucius she pronounces "a sweet little piece," and finer than most things produced by a more enlightened age.
This is not a bad showing for those easy old days, when the higher education of women had not yet dawned as a remote possibility upon any mind; and when, in truth, the education of men had fallen to a lower level than in earlier colonial times. Philadelphia was sinking into a stagnant mediocrity, her college had been robbed of its charter, and the scholarly ambitions (they were never more than ambitions) of Franklin's time were fading fast away. Even Franklin, while writing admirable prose, had failed to discover any difference between good and bad verse. His own verse is as cheerfully and comprehensively bad as any to be found, and he always maintained that men should practise the art of poetry, only that they might improve their prose. This purely utilitarian view of the poet's office was not conducive to high thinking or fine criticism;
