“There are few persons on record to whose individual genius and exertions a community has owed so much as to Dr. Franklin. If William Penn was the political founder of the province, Franklin may perhaps be denominated the architect of its literature, the gifted author of many of its best institutions, and the father of some of the finest features of our character. It is seldom, however, that Providence has vouchsafed such a length of years to such an intellect, and still more seldom that such events occur as those which developed the powers and capacities of Franklin’s mind. The name of this illustrious man is closely connected with the literary history of Pennsylvania; but his life and actions are too well known to require that any elaborate notice of them should be given here. Referring, therefore, to his own invaluable memoirs for the events of his personal and political history, I shall content myself with a short sketch of the principal features of his literary career. The year 1723 was that in which Franklin first set his foot in Philadelphia. As he landed on Market Street wharf, and walked up that street, an obscure and almost penniless boy, devouring a roll of bread, and ignorant where he could find a lodging for the night, little could he or any one who then saw him anticipate that later advent, when, sixty years afterwards, he landed upon the same wharf, amid the acclamations of thousands of spectators, on his return from an embassy in which he had dictated to his former king the terms of peace for the confederated republics, of one of which he was placed at the head, and not merely distinguished as a politician, but covered with literary honors and distinctions from every country in Christendom by which genius and public virtue were held in estimation. And yet the change was scarcely greater for Franklin than for Philadelphia. The petty provincial village, with its scattered houses dotted over the bank of the Delaware, had become a magnificent metropolis, distinguished for the wisdom and liberality of its institutions, and as the seat of a general and republican government, which at the former period could scarcely have entered into his dreams. “At the time of Franklin’s arrival in Philadelphia there were two printing-offices in operation. Keimer, the proprietor of one of them, had but one press and a few worn-out types, with which, when Franklin visited him, he was composing an elegy, literally of his own _composition_, for it had never gone through the usual process in this manufacture, of pen and ink, but flowed at once from his brain to the press. The subject of these typographical stanzas was _Aquila Rose_, an apprentice in the office, whose surname naturally suggested to the mind of Keimer some touching figures. If we may judge from some specimens of his poetry which Thomas has preserved in his History of Printing, the province lost little by Keimer’s emigration to Bermuda, which took place shortly afterwards.”