Benjamin Franklin--printer, scientist, inventor, author, philosopher, and statesman--was also one of the great travelers of the eighteenth century. Living in Europe for more than a quarter of a century, first as a young entrepreneur, then in service to colonial Pennsylvania, and finally as a representative of the United States, Franklin made the dangerous Atlantic crossing eight times. One of his great strengths, according to biographer Esmond Wright, was "his almost total freedom from the limits of his own environment" and the ease with which he assimilated into European life. Renowned and respected for his many accomplishments, Franklin was, arguably, America's premier diplomat during the eighteenth century, a role he played until he was nearly eighty years old.

"Travelling," Franklin observed in his papers, "is one Way of lengthening Life, at least in Appearance." Certainly, some of the most enduring images of Franklin the person are the result of...