truths they dared not utter, facts they dared not discover.  View him in the stillness of meditation, his eager spirit busied over a copious page, and his eye sparkling with gladness!  He has concluded what his countrymen will hereafter cherish as the legacy of genius—­you see him now changed; and the restlessness of his soul is thrown into his very gestures—­could you listen to the vaticinator!  But the next age only will quote his predictions.  If he be the truly great author, he will be best comprehended by posterity, for the result of ten years of solitary meditation has often required a whole century to be understood and to be adopted.  The ideas of Bishop BERKELEY, in his “Theory of Vision,” were condemned as a philosophical romance, and now form an essential part of every treatise of optics; and “The History of Oracles,” by FONTENELLE, says La Harpe, which, in his youth, was censured for its impiety, the centenarian lived to see regarded as a proof of his respect for religion.

“But what influence can this solitary man, this author of genius, have on his nation, when he has none in the very street in which he lives? and it may be suspected as little in his own house, whose inmates are hourly practising on the infantine simplicity which marks his character, and that frequent abstraction from what is passing under his own eyes?”

This solitary man of genius is stamping his own character on the minds of his own people.  Take one instance, from others far more splendid, in the contrast presented by FRANKLIN and Sir WILLIAM JONES.  The parsimonious habits, the money-getting precepts, the wary cunning, the little scruple about means, the fixed intent upon the end, of Dr. FRANKLIN, imprinted themselves on his Americans.  Loftier feelings could not elevate a man of genius who became the founder of a trading people, and who retained the early habits of a journeyman; while the elegant tastes of Sir WILLIAM JONES could inspire the servants of a commercial corporation to open new and vast sources of knowledge.  A mere company of merchants, influenced by the literary character, enlarges the stores of the imagination and provides fresh materials for the history of human nature.

FRANKLIN, with that calm good sense which is freed from the passion of imagination, has himself declared this important truth relating to the literary character:—­“I have always thought that one man of tolerable abilities may work great changes and accomplish great affairs among mankind, if he first forms a good plan; and cutting off all amusements, or other employments that would divert his attention, makes the execution of that same plan his sole study and business.”  Fontenelle was of the same opinion, for he remarks that “a single great man is sufficient to accomplish a change in the taste of his age.”  The life of GRANVILLE SHARP is a striking illustration of the solitary force of individual character.