Franklin, who was the founder of that library, made his first electrical experiments with an apparatus that had been sent to it as a present by Peter Collinson. He deemed it therefore a proper mark of acknowledgement to inform him of the success with which it had been used, and his first Essays on Electricity were originally communicated in letters to this good man. They were read in the Royal Society, “where they were not thought worth so much notice as to be printed in their Transactions;” and his paper in which the sameness of lightning with electricity was first asserted, was laughed at by the connoisseurs. Peter Collinson however gave the letters to Cave for the Gentleman's Magazine; Cave forming a better judgment than the Royal Society had done, printed them separately in a pamphlet, for which Dr. Fothergill wrote a preface; the pamphlet by successive additions swelled to a volume in quarto which went through five editions, and as Franklin observes, “cost Cave nothing for copy money.” What a contrast between this English Quaker and Monsieur Le Cour, (observe, reader, I call him Monsieur, lest you should mistake him for a Dutchman, seeing that he lived at Leyden,) who having raised a double tuberose from the seed, and propagated it by the roots, till he had as many as he could find room to plant, destroyed the rest as fast as they were produced, that he might boast of being the only person in Europe who possessed it. Another French florist of the same stamp, M. Bachelier was his name, kept in like manner some beautiful species of the anemone to himself, which he had procured from the East Indies, and succeeded in withholding them for ten years from all who wished to possess them likewise. A counseller of the Parliament however one day paid him a visit when they were in seed, and in walking with him round the garden, contrived to let his gown fall upon them; by this means he swept off a good number of the seeds, and his servant who was apprized of the scheme, dexterously wrapt up the gown and secured them. Any one must have been a sour moralist who should have considered this to be a breach of the eighth commandment. Mr. Allison was well acquainted with Peter Collinson; he and his sister sometimes visited him at Mill Hill, and upon their removal into Yorkshire they were supplied from thence with choice fruit trees, and fine varieties of the narcissus and polyanthus, which were the good Quaker's favourite tribes. The wall fruits were under Mr. Allison's especial care; he called himself indeed First Lord of the Fruit Department; and if the first lords of certain other departments had taken as much pains to understand their business and to perform it, the affairs of the state would have been better managed than they were in his days, and than they are in ours. Some part also he took in directing the business of the kitchen garden; but the flowers were left entirely to Betsey and her aunt.