Of soldiers and statesmen and sages,
And of poets—the salt of the earth—
Who preserved all the good of the ages,
And added their genius and worth.
Then rest in our bosom, unfearing,
And thou'lt dream of the time that must come,
When thy steed shall again be careering,
The trumpet be answering the drum;
When Italy, strong, self-reliant,
In the face of the meddlesome Gaul
Shall but laugh with her bayonets defiant,
And wait for whatever may fall.
As God watches all things from heaven,
So as surely this issue shall be;
For the mass is alive with His leaven;
He means His whole world to be free!
THE OLD SLATE-ROOF HOUSE.[1]
I.
IT is now nearly a century and a quarter since the curiosity of Kalm, the Swedish naturalist, was thoroughly aroused by observing on the summit of a hill, a little north of the Swedes' Church, near the Delaware river, an ancient wooden building, which, he was told, had been religiously preserved as a memorial of the state of the place before Philadelphia existed.
It had been the residence of one of the three Swedish brothers called Sven's Sœner—sons of Sven—of whom Penn had purchased the site upon which he erected his town. Its antiquity gave it a kind of superiority over all the sur-
- ↑ The original information embodied in this paper is derived from a thorough examination of the old house itself during the last summer, and from extended researches among the Penn MSS., the Carpenter MSS., the Logan MSS., a large number of miscellaneous letters of the period treated of, the manuscript records in the various public offices of record in Philadelphia, as well as the voluminous publications of the English Record Commission.
The following works have also been consulted:
Colonial Records of Pennsylvania: Penna. Archives; Inscriptions in Burial Grounds of Christ Church; Ligon's Hist. of Barbadoes, A. D. 1657; Hist. of Barbadoes, 1768; Sketches of Barbadoes, 1840; Sutcliff's Travels; Collection of Memorials Concerning the People called Quakers, 1787; Record of Upland, edited by Edward Armstrong; Prof. Kalm's Travels in North America; Bolton's Hist. Westchester Co., N. Y.; Webb's Penns and Peningtons; The Hill Family, by John Jay Smith; William Penn's Works, 2 vols. fol.; Sewall's Hist. of the Quakers; Besse's Sufferings of Friends; Caribbeana; Prendergast's Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland; Memoirs Hist. Soc. of Pennsylvania; Granville (illegible text) of Admiral Sir Wm. Penn, Knt.; Proud's Hist. Penna.; Tuckerman's America and her Commentators; Hazard's Annals of Pennsylvania; Hazard's Annals of Philadelphia; Graydon's Memoirs; Sparks' Life of Gouverneur Morris; British Empire; Armistead's Life of Logan; Balch's Letters and Papers, chiefly relating to Provincial Hist. of Penna.; Journal of Isaac Norris, edited and published by J. P. Norris; Doc. Hist. of New York; Colonial Hist. of N. Y., edited by Dr. O'Callaghan; Minutes of Common Council of Philadelphia; Simpson's Eminent Philadelphians; Franklin's Autobiography; Masson's Life and Times of John Chilton; Gilbert's Hist. Viceroys of Ireland; J. Francis Fisher's Memoir of Penn; Ferris' Orig. Settlements on the Delaware; Count Rumford's Philosophical Essays; Caspar Souder's Sketch; Dixon's Life of Penn; Janney's Life of Penn; Thompson Westcott's valuable History of Philadelphia.
Acknowledgments are also due to the following named gentlemen who have aided the writer in his researches:
J. Dickinson Sergeant; Edward Armstrong: John McAllister; John A. McAllister; W. J. Clark; F. Gutekunst; T. Westcott; C. Souder; H. G. Jones; Major Etting; John Jay Smith; Lloyd P. Smith; J. Francis Fisher and Edward Penington, Jr.
