Page:Works of the Late Doctor Benjamin Franklin (1793).djvu/117

107 By theſe experiments Franklin's theory was eſtabliſhed in the moſt firm manner. When the truth of it could no longer be doubted, the vanity of men endeavoured to detract from its merit. That an American, an inhabitant of the obſcure city of Philadelphia, the name of which was hardly known, ſhould be able to make diſcoveries, and to frame theories, which had eſcaped the notice of the enlightened philoſophers of Europe, was too mortifying to be admitted. He muſt certainly have taken the idea from ſome one elſe. An American, a being of an inferior order, make diſcoveries! Impoſſible. It was ſaid, that the Abbé Nollet, in 1748, had ſuggeſted the idea of the ſimilarity of lightning and electricity, in his Leçons de Phyſique. It is true, that the Abbe mentions the idea, but he throws it out as a bare conjecture, and propoſes no mode of aſcertaining the truth of it. He himſelf acknowledges, that Franklin firſt entertained the bold thought of bringing lightning from the heavens, by means of pointed rods fixed in the air. The ſimilarity of electricity and lightning is ſo ſtrong, that we need not be ſurpriſed at notice being taken of it, as ſoon as electrical phenomena be- came familiar. We find it mentioned by Dr. Wall and Mr. Grey, while the ſcience was in its infancy. But the honour of forming a regular theory of thunder-guſts, of ſuggeſting a mode of determining the truth of it by experiments, and of putting theſe experiments in practice, and thus eſtabliſhing his theory upon a firm and ſolid baſis, is inconteſtibly due to Franklin. D'Alibard, who made the firſt experiments in France, ſays, that he only followed the track which Franklin had pointed out.

It has been of late aſſerted, that the honour of completing the experiment with the electrical