hands, without arrangement, with no other guide than the chance which brought them to me, or the knowledge I had acquired of their existence in the scanty libraries of San Juan. The first was the 'Life of Cicero' by Middleton, with very fine plates, and in that book I lived a long time with the Romans. If I had then had half the means of doing it, I should have studied law to make myself an advocate and defend causes like that distinguished orator who was the object of my passionate love. The second was the 'Life of Franklin,' and no book has ever done me more good. The 'Life of Franklin' was to me what 'Plutarch's Lives ' were to Rousseau, Henry IV., Madame Roland, and so many others. I felt myself to be Franklin,—and why not? I was very poor like him, I studied like him, and following in his footsteps, I might one day come, like him, to be a doctor ad honor em! and to make myself a place in letters and American politics. The 'Life of Franklin' should be in every primary school. His example is so inspiring, the career he ran so glorious, that there would not be a boy at all well-inclined who would not try to be a little Franklin, through that noble tendency of the human mind to imitate models of perfection that commend themselves to it. Holy aspirations of the young soul for the beautiful and the perfect! Where among our books is the type, the practical possible model, which shall guide them? Our preachers propose to us the saints of heaven, that we may imitate their ascetic virtues and scourgings, but however well-intentioned a boy may be, he soon renounces the pretension to perform miracles, for the simple reason that those who counsel him to try it, do not perform any themselves."
It was at this time that he read the Bible with his uncle the presbyter Albarracin, Paley's "Natural
