While many others "_rise early, and late take rest, and eat the bread of labour and care_," that they may "_die rich_"--leaving their massy treasures, some scanty legacies excepted, to corrupt a few proud relatives, doctor Franklin acted as though the above text, the _true sublime of wisdom and benevolence_, was before him. After having _bequeathed_ his books, a most voluminous and valuable collection, partly to his family, and partly to the Boston and Philadelphia philosophical societies; and, after having divided a handsome competence among his children, and grand children, he goes on as follows: "I. Having owed my first instructions in literature to the free grammar schools in Boston, I give one hundred pounds sterling to the free schools in that town, to be laid out in silver medals as honorary rewards for the encouragement of scholarship in those schools. "II. All the debts to my post-office establishment, which I held many years, I leave to the Philadelphia hospital. "III. Having always been of opinion, that in democratical governments, there ought to be no offices of _great_ profit, I have long determined to give a part of my public salary to public uses; and being chiefly indebted to Massachusetts, my _native_ state, and Pennsylvania, my _adopted_ state, for lucrative employments, I feel it my duty to remember them; and having from long observation, and my own early experience, discovered that the best objects for assistance are indigent young persons, and the best modes of assistance, a plain education, a good trade, and a little money to set them up; and having been set up in business, while a poor boy, in Philadelphia, by kind loans of money from two friends there, which was the foundation of my fortune and all the usefulness that the world ascribed to me, I feel a wish to be useful, after my death, to others, in the loans of money; I therefore devote, from the savings of my salaries, the following sums, to the following persons and uses: "1. To the inhabitants of Boston and Philadelphia, one thousand pounds sterling to each city, to be let out by the oldest divines of different churches, on a _five per cent. interest_ and good _security_, to indigent young tradesmen, not _bachelors_, (as they have not deserved much from their country and the feebler sex,) but married men." "2. No borrower to have more than sixty pounds sterling, nor less than fifteen." "3. And in order to serve as many as possible in their turn, as well as to make the payment of the principal borrowed more easy, each borrower shall be obliged to pay, with the yearly interest, one tenth part of the principal; which sums of principal and interest, so paid, shall be again lent out to fresh borrowers. "B. FRANKLIN."