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Benjamin Franklin has been a rogue: for Benjamin Franklin was a cautious man, too wise to commit himself on earth without most conclusive evidence,—which perhaps he has not yet found to his satisfaction. You will not expect to find the Emperor of France devoting his energies to the training of an obscure school in the Parisian suburbs? Then why should we expect Gallileo to return, to assure us that his calculations were correct? The dead have their equals to converse with; why should they desire to teach us underlings? That a grandmother of an affectionate nature should return, recently dead, to console a relative in whom she had ever taken more interest than in metaphysical progression, is not inconsistent; nor is it outrageous to propose that a newly-buried Dutchman should as yet deliver an indifferent message to the Chinese: but to propose that a born villain—a lecherous, treacherous, and bloody knave, should, in a week after his decease, have grown as benevolent as Howard, as calm as Washington, as wise as Shakspeare, and as pure as him whose holy life has named him the Saviour of men, would seem very inconsistent and unreasonable, even though all souls are similar, and varied by the body in effects. It is but rational, that spirits should require time, in order to form just opinions of the second life. Men may look well about them, and seek for the truth as it is in this world, and they will find plenty ready to contradict them, even to their face. Let us not be disgusted then if spirits should differ in their reports,—or if some of them should lie occasionally,—or if there is many a thing that we