order, with their respective brigades. Sullivan took command of the whole wing, as the senior officer, while Washington, with Greene, took post between it and the left wing at Chadsford, ready to reinforce either which might require his aid.

The ground occupied by Sullivan was well chosen, and very advantageous; but the enemy did not allow him to collect all his troops, and he was forced to give way, after a manly resistance, and fled to the woods in their rear, and along the road by which Greene was now approaching to their aid. To prevent the confusion of the fugitives from being communicated to his own troops, Greene opened his lines to the right and left, and, after giving them passage, closed again, and, facing about, retired in good order, keeping the enemy in check by a steady fire of artillery. The Pennsylvania and Virginia militia, who composed his brigade, made a vigorous stand in a defile on the road, where they for some time brought the enemy to a halt. General Knyphausen now advanced to the ford in earnest; and the Americans left in defence of the intrenchments and battery on the opposite side, seeing some of the British troops approaching on their right, in pursuit of their retreating countrymen, abandoned the ground and retired. General Greene was the last officer on the ground, and left it only when darkness had come on. The Americans, routed, reached Chester that night, and Philadelphia the next day; their entire loss being stated at about three hundred killed, six hundred wounded, and four hundred prisoners. Ten field-pieces and a howitzer also fell into the hands of the enemy. The enemy lost, in all, about five hundred men. In this action, the foreign volunteers, so recently enlisted under the American standard, performed good service. The Marquis Lafayette, while rallying his troops, received the wound in his leg which rendered him a cripple for the rest of his life; but it did not prevent him from continuing his labors through the fight. Captain De Fleury had a horse killed under him, and the Baron St. Ovary was made captive.

On the day following the battle, a body of the enemy's light troops marched to Wilmington, in Delaware, and made prisoner of the governor, and seized a quantity of money and other property, public and private, with some papers of importance. There being no longer any force sufficient to resist him, Lord Cornwallis entered Philadelphia, on the 26th of September, with a body of British and Hessian grenadiers, leaving his army encamped at Germantown: the number of royalists in that city at the time being so great as to leave him little room for apprehension. General Washington, in the meantime, retired, with the few troops he could command, to Skippack creek, on the banks of the Schuylkill; a wild region, difficult of access, and a favorable retreat in his circumstances, which rendered the protection of nature necessary to his safety.

INTERESTING FACTS IN THE HISTORY or PENNSYLVANIA.-It was designed by Penn that Philadelphia should never be closely built. He named it thus, as he remarked, "before it was born," in order to express the principles of benevolence on which he intended to have its concerns conducted, and intended that it should always be " a greene towne," with ample room for the convenience and comfort of all the inhabitants. It still presents a general aspect quite different from that of the most crowded cities of the Old World, with respect to the streets, which, instead of being narrow, crooked, and dirty, are straight, wide, and clean. His plan, however, has been in some points encroached upon. He insisted that the bank of the Delaware should be kept open and unoccupied by buildings and enclosures, and resisted every proposal to abridge the freedom which the public enjoyed, in approaching the water. An unhappy change has since taken place; and there are now few cities in our country where the wharves are more crowded and inconvenient.

The plan of his new city appears, from l'enn's original instructions to his three commissioners, to have been very large. These men, Willam Crispin, John Bezar, and Nathaniel Allen, were sent out

He directed that "the creeks should be sounded on every side of Delaware river, especially upland, in order to settle a great towne." His object was to find a place "where most ships may ride, of deepest draught of water, if possible, to load and unload at ye bank or key side, without boating and lightering it." He directed that the earth should be dug, to ascertain that the soil was dry and healthy, and that ten thousand acres should be laid out for the liberties of the town.

Twelve square miles would have been required, by the plan, for all the purchasers; and this, with other requisitions, induced the commissioners to defer the selection of any site, and to await the arrival of Penn. They examined and described the site of Chester, a place on the elevated bank at the mouth of Poquessin creek and Pennsbury manor, as well as the place where Philadelphia stands, which proved most agreeable to the governor. It is said, by tradition, that he took an open boat, at Chester, and proceeded to Wicacoa, with a few friends, toward the end of November, 1682, and found the site of the present city occupied by three Swedes, brothers, named Swenson, a name since altered to Swanson. The river's bank was then high, and covered with a thick growth of tall pines, a place which the Indians called Coaquannock. It seems that the spot had something, even in its wild state, which recommended it for a settlement: as Proud says that some of the passengers in the first ship which ever sailed so far up the Delaware (namely, the Shield, Captain Towes, from Hull, December, 1678), exclaimed, "It is a fine place for a town." He mentions, also, that the shore was bold and high, so that, in turning, some of the tackling struck the trees.

This was a vessel bringing out colonists for New Jersey. Penn arrived four years later; and, having purchased the ground of the three Swedes above-men

and to prepare for its construction. It is remarkable that numbers of the people who had preceded him, for some time after their arrival, had taken up their dwelling in caves under the steep bank. The first house erected was that of George Guest, which was not completed when Penn arrived. It stood near Powell's dock, in Budd's row, and long served as a tavern, under the name of the Blue Anchor.

The first person born in Philadelphia was said to be John Key, and his birthplace was one of the caves just mentioned, near Sassafras street, which was long known as the "Pennypot." He lived to the age of eighty-four, and died at Kennet, on the 5th of July, 1765. William Penn, it is said, gave him a lot of ground. He used to walk into the city until within six years of his death, and was generally known, in the latter part of his life, by the name of "the first-born."

Between twenty and thirty vessels arrived in the course of the first year, bringing out great numbers of quakers, who had left their homes to avoid the persecutions to which they were exposed. They were so numerous, that not only Philadelphia became at once a considerable town, but the country was well supplied with inhabitants along the river's borders for a distance of fifty miles, from Chester up to the falls at Trenton.

The house of Thomas Fairbank, at Shackamaxon, near Kensington, was occupied, in 1681, as a quaker meetinghouse; and the following year a boarded building was erected for this purpose, in the city. Another was erected near the centre of Philadelphia, in 1684; one in Front street, in 1685; the great meetinghouse in High street, in 1695; one on the hill, in Pine street, in 1753; and the present one in High street, in 1755.

Between 1682 and 1714, no less than three hundred and fourteen marriages were performed among the quakers; and in the years 1681, 1682, and 1683, about fifty vessels arrived with passengers. Among these were a number of German

ny" in their native place, Krisheim, near Worms, in the Palatinate, they seized the opportunity offered by Penn, to take up their habitation in America, in a state founded by one of their own faith, and settled at Germantown, which derived its name from them. Among them were persons of all ages, and some who had been brought up in ease and plenty. To them the common trials of the colonists must have been severe, as some of the new-comers were obliged to occupy hollow trees, as well as caverns, while preparations were making for the erection of houses or huts; and most of these afforded poor accommodations, and even but little protection from the cold and storms of the winter.

The celebrated treaty made by Penn with the Indians has always been a compact of peculiar interest, on account of the principles of justice and humanity on which it was founded, the sacredness with which it was observed, and the extensive, lasting, and beneficial effects which it produced. Yet it is remarkable that no written memorial of it remains, beyond a few allusions to it made in contemporaneous documents, and that everything else relating to it depends upon the authority of tradition. The spot is pointed out, on the bank of the Delaware, where the council assembled in 1682, under an elm-tree, at Kensington, where a plain obelisk now stands, erected by the Penn society, in 1827, bearing the following brief but appropriate inscriptions:

On the north side: "Treaty-ground of William Penn and the Indian natives, 1682."

On the south: "William Penn: born 1644; died 1718."

On the west: "Placed by the Penn society, A. D. 1827: To mark the site of the great elm-tree."

On the east: "Pennsylvania founded, 1681, by deeds of peace."

A long memoir was presented to the Pennsylvania Historical society, in 1836, by Messrs. Duponçeau and Fisher, on the subject of Penn's first treaty, in

Letitia House.-This celebrated building, still standing in a street of Philadelphia of the smaller size, has excited much attention within a few years, since the spirit of antiquarian research has arisen, as it is believed to have been erected for William Penn's own use, by William Markham, in the year 1682, the year before his arrival. It is of brick, of small size, two stories high, with a single window on each side of the door, a steep roof, a stack of chimneys, and a single dormer-window in front. A rustic roof projects over the door, which is entered by rising a single step from the street; and an old-fashioned, wooden cellar-door, nearly flat, opens under each of the windows. The little street in which it stands is named Letitia court, and opens on Market street, between Front and Second streets.

A letter of Penn is preserved, in which he allows his "cousin Markham to live in his house in Philadelphia, and that Thomas Lloyd, the deputy-governor, should have the use of his periwigs, and any wines and beer he may have there left for the use of strangers." It appears that Penn, having been accustomed to the luxurious style of King Charles II., and to the upper classes of society during his travels on the continent, never renounced all traces of his early habits, even after he had placed himself at the head of the friends in their great colony in America. He paid much regard to dress and forms in public; and was, according to descriptions and pictures remaining of him, before he came to America, "quite a finished gentleman, eminently handsome, the appearance of his countenance remarkably pleasing and sweet, his eye dark and lively, and his hair flowing gracefully over his shoulders, according to the fashion set by the worthless but fascinating Charles II." His portrait, presented to the Historical society by his grandson, bears witness to the accuracy of this description; and it would seem, from writings extant, that he maintained, in his colony, habits in several