Perhaps the violent opposition which the erection of lightning conductors--or ‘Franklin rods,’ as they were often called--met almost everywhere, would have proved more effective than it ultimately turned out, had not the great discoverer himself showed admirable temper in meeting his enemies, thus pouring oil upon the stormy waters. His calmness and confidence is admirably shown in a letter, dated July 2, 1768, addressed to Professor John Winthrop, of Cambridge, in answer to one in which astonishment was expressed at the ‘force of prejudice, even in an age of so much knowledge and free inquiry,’ of not placing lightning conductors upon all elevated buildings. Franklin--or he must now be called Dr. Franklin, having received the degrees of LL. D. and D. C. L. from the universities of St. Andrew’s, Edinburgh, and Oxford--was residing in England at the time, as agent of the people of Pennsylvania. He was thoroughly acquainted with the state of public feeling, yet so far from being angry, smiled down upon it like a true philosopher. ‘It is perhaps not so extraordinary,’ he wrote to his friend, ‘that unlearned men, such as commonly compose our church vestries, should not yet be acquainted with, and sensible of, the benefits of metal conductors in averting the stroke of lightning, and preserving our houses from its violent effects, or that they should still be prejudiced against the use of such conductors, when we see how long even philosophers, men of science and of great ingenuity, can hold out against the evidence of new knowledge that does not square with their preconceptions; and how long men can retain a practice that is conformable to their prejudices, and expect a benefit from such practice, though constant experience shows its inutility. A late piece of the Abbé Nollet, printed last year in the Memoirs of the French Academy of Sciences, affords strong instances of this; for though the very relations he gives of the effects of lightning in several churches and other buildings show clearly that it was conducted from one part to another by wires, gildings, and other pieces of metal that were _within_, or connected with the building, yet in the same paper he objects to the providing of metallic conductors _without_ the building, as useless or dangerous. He cautions people not to ring the church bells during a thunderstorm, lest the lightning, in its way to the earth, should be conducted down to them by the bell ropes, which are but bad conductors; and yet he is against fixing metal rods on the outside of the steeple, which are known to be much better conductors, and through which lightning would certainly choose to pass, rather than through dry hemp. And though, for a thousand years past, church bells have been solemnly consecrated by the Romish Church, in expectation that the sound of such blessed bells would drive away thunderstorms, and secure buildings from the stroke of lightning; and, during so long a period, it has not been found by experience, that places within the reach of such blessed sound are safer than others where it is never heard, but that, on the contrary, the lightning seems to strike steeples by choice, and at the very time the bells are ringing, yet still they continue to bless the new bells, and jangle the old ones whenever it thunders.’