Page:Works of the Late Doctor Benjamin Franklin (1793).djvu/186

176 What now avails all my toil and labour, in amaſſing honey-dew on this leaf, which I cannot live to enjoy! What the political ſtruggles I have been engaged in, for the good of my compatriot inhabitants of this buſh, or my philoſophical ſtudies, for the benefit of our race in general! for in politics (what can laws do without morals?) our preſent race of ephemeræ will in a courſe of minutes become corrupt, like thoſe of other and older buſhes, and conſequently as wretched: And in philoſophy how ſmall our progreſs! Alas! art is long, and life is ſhort! My friend would comfort me with the idea of a name, they ſay, I ſhall leave behind me; and they tell me I have lived long enough to nature and to glory. But what will fame be to an ephemera who no longer exiſts? and what will become of all hiſtory in the eighteenth hour, when the world itſelf, even the whole Moulin Joly, ſhall come to its end, and be buried in univerſal ruin?" To me, after all my eager purſuits, no ſolid pleaſures now remain, but the reflection of a long life ſpent in meaning well, the ſenſible converſation of a few good lady ephemeræ, and now and then a kind ſmile and a tune from the ever amiable Brilliant.

B. FRANKLIN.