Association, &c. to club their means to preserve it for their chambers, &c. as long as themselves and the city may endure! There is a moral influence in these measures that implies and effects much more in its influence on national action and feeling, than can reach the apprehension of superficial thinkers; who can only estimate its value by their conception of so much brick and mortar! It was feelings such as I wish to see appreciated here, that aroused the ardor of Petrarch's townsmen, jealous of every thing consecrated by his name, whereby they ran together en masse, to prevent the proprietor of his house from altering it! Foreigners, we know, have honoured England by their eagerness to go to Bread street, and there visit the house and chambers once Milton's! 'Tis in vain to deride the passion as futile; the charm is in the ideal presence which the association has power to create in the imagination; and they who can command the grateful visions will be sure to indulge them. It is poetry of feeling--scoffs cannot repress it. It equally possessed the mind of Tully when he visited Athens; he could not forbear to visit the walks and houses which the old philosophers had frequented or inhabited. In this matter, says Dr. Johnson, "I am afraid to declare against the general voice of mankind." "The heart is stone that feels not at it; or, it feels at none!" Sheer insensibility, absorbed in its own selfishness, alone escapes the spell-like influence! Every nation, when sufficiently intellectual, has its golden and heroic ages; and the due contemplation of these relics of our antiquities, presents the proper occasion for forming ours. These thoughts, elicited by the occasion, form the proper

apology for whatever else we may offer to public notice in this way. There is a generation to come who will be grateful for all such notices.

At this house, Lord Cornbury, then governor of New York and New Jersey, (son of Lord Clarendon, cousin of Queen Anne, &c.) was banqueted in great style in 1702, on the occasion of his being invited by James Logan, from Burlington, where he had gone to proclaim the queen. Logan's letter, speaking of the event, says he was dined "equal, as he said, to any thing he had seen in America." At night he was invited to Edward Shippen's, (great house in South Second street) where he was lodged, and dined with all his company, making a retinue of nearly thirty persons. He went back well pleased with his reception, via Burlington, in the governor's barge, and was again banqueted at Pennsbury by James Logan, who had preceded him for that purpose. Lord Cornbury there had a retinue of about fifty persons, which accompanied him thither in four boats. His wife was once with him in Philadelphia, in 1703. Penn, on one occasion, calls him a man of luxury and poverty. He was at first very popular; and having made many fine promises to Penn, it was probably deemed good policy to cheer his vanity by striking public entertainments. In time, however, his extravagant living, and consequent extortion, divested him of all respect among the people. Only one legendary tale respecting this personage has reached us: An old woman at Chester had told the Parker family she remembered to have seen him at that place, and having heard he was a lord, and a queen's cousin, she had eyed him with great exactness, and had seen

no difference in him, from other men, but that he wore leather stockings!*

In 1709, "the slated-roof house of William Trent" is thus commended by James Logan, as a suitable residence for Penn as governor, saying, "William Trent, designing for England, is about selling his house, (that he bought of Samuel Carpenter,) which thou lived in, with the improvement of a beautiful garden,"-then extending half way to Front street and on Second street nearly down to Walnut street. "I wish it could be made thine, as nothing in this town is so well fitting a governor. His price is £900 of our money, which it is hard thou canst not spare. I would give 20 to 30%. out of my own pocket that it were thine-nobody's but thine."

The house was, however, sold to Isaac Norris, who devised it to his son Isaac, through whom it has descended down to the present proprietor, Sarah Norris Dickinson, his grand-daughter.

It was occupied at one period, it is said, by Governor Hamilton, and, for many years preceding the war of independence, it was deemed a superior boarding house. While it held its rank as such, it was honoured with the company, and, finally, with the funeral honours of General Forbes, successor to General Braddock, who died in that house in 1759. The pomp of his funeral from that house surpassed all the simple inhabitants had before seen in their city. His horse was led before the procession, richly caparisoned,-the whole conducted

* William Penn, in one of his notes, says, "Pray send me iny leather stockings."

in all "the pomp of war," with funeral dirges, and a military array, with arms reversed, &c.

In 1764, it was rented to be occupied as a distinguished boarding house by the widow Graydon, mother of Captain Graydon of Carlisle, who has left us his amusing "Memoirs of sixty years' life in Pennsylvania.” There his mother, as he informs us, had a great many gentry as lodgers. He describes the old house as very much of a castle in its construction, although built originally for a Friend. "It was a singular oldfashioned structure, laid out in the style of a fortification, with abundance of angles both salient and re-entering. Its two wings projected to the street in the manner of bastions, to which the main building, retreating from 16 to 18 feet, served for a curtain."* "It had a spacious yard, half way to Front street, and ornamented with a double row of venerable lofty pines, which afforded a very agreeable rus in urbe." She continued there till 1768-9, when she removed to Drinker's big house, up Front street near to Race street. Graydon's anecdotes of distinguished persons, especially of British officers and gentry who were inmates, are interesting. John Adams, and other members of the first congress, had their lodgings in "the Slate-house.”

*We may say of this house :-"Trade has changed the scene;" for the recess is since filled out to the front with store windows, and the idea of the bastions, though still there, is lost.

THE CAVES.

MOST Philadelphians have had some vague conceptions of the caves and cabins in which the primitive settlers made their temporary residence. The caves were generally formed by digging into the ground, near the verge of the river-front bank, about three feet in depth; thus making half their chamber under ground, and the remaining half above ground was formed of sods of earth, or earth and brush combined. The roofs were formed of layers of limbs, or split pieces of trees, overlaid with sod or bark, river-rushes, &c. The chimneys were of stones and river-pebbles, mortared together with clay and grass, or river-reeds. The following facts may illustrate this subject, to wit:

An original paper is in John Johnson's family, of the year 1683, which is an instrument concerning a division. of certain lands, and "executed and witnessed in the cave of Francis Daniel Pastorius, Esq."

On the 17th of 9th mo. 1685, it was ordered by the provincial executive council, that all families living in caves should appear before the council. What a group they must have made! This order was occasioned by the representations of the magistrates of Philadelphia, and enforced by a letter they had received from Governor Penn, in England. No one, however, thought proper to obey the order. The council gave "further notice" that the governor's orders relating to the caves will be put in execution in one month's time.

In 1685, the grand jury present Joseph Knight, for