his good-tempered, sensible countenance put them in good humor. One young woman, who was soon to leave the prison, declared that she should do so unwillingly, because she should then no longer see good Mr. S.

In the cells of the female prisoners, among whom were two negro women, I saw fresh flowers in glasses. Their female keeper had given them these. They all praised her.

I left this prison more edified than I had often been on leaving a church. Friend S. told me that the number of the prisoners had not increased since the commencement of the prison, but continued very much about the same, which is a pleasing fact, as the population of the city has considerably increased during this time, and increases every year. Less pleasing and satisfactory is it, as regards the effect of the system, that the same prisoners not unfrequently return, and for the same kind of crime. But this is natural enough. It is not easy to amend a fault which has become habitual through many years, nor easy to amend old criminals. Hence the hope of the New World is not to reform so much through prisons as through schools, and still more through the homes; when all homes become that which they ought to be, and that which many already are, the great reformatory work will be done.

Two houses of refuge, asylums for neglected boys, which I have visited, seem to be well-conceived and well-managed institutions. The boys here, as well as in the great establishment at Westboro', in Massachusetts, which I visited with the S.s last autumn, are treated according to the same plan. They are kept in these establishments but a few months, receive instruction, and are well disciplined, and then are placed out in good families in the country, principally in the West, where there is plenty of room for all kinds of working people.

The Sailors' Home is an institution set on foot by private individuals, and intended to furnish a good home at

a low price to seamen of all nations during the time that they remain in the city and their vessels in harbor. I visited it in company with Mrs. Hale, the author of "Miriam," a lady with a practical, intellectual brow, and frank, and most agreeable manners. She is now occupied in the publication of a work on the position of women in society, a work not sufficiently liberal in its tendency, according to my opinion.

Of all the public institutions which I visited I was least satisfied with the great Philadelphia Poor-house, an immense establishment for about three thousand persons, which costs the city an immense sum, and yet which can not possibly answer its purpose. Every thing is done too much in a massive, manufacturing way; the individual becomes lost in the mass, and can not receive his proper degree of attention. The lazy mendicant receives as much as the unfortunate, the lame, and the blind, and they can not have that individual care which they require. At least so it appeared to me. Neither did it seem to me that the guardian spirit of the place was so generous and so full of tenderness as in the other institutions, and I failed to find places of repose under the open sky, with trees, and green space, and flowers for the aged. The little court with a few trees was nothing to speak of. For the rest, the institution was remarkable for its order and cleanliness, which are distinguishing features of all the public institutions of the New World. Large, light halls, in the walls of which were formed small, dark rooms, like niches or cells, the sleeping-rooms of the aged, and which thus gave to every person his own little apartment, with a door opening into the common hall, in which an iron stove diffused warmth to all, seemed to me the prevailing arrangement for the poor. And it is certainly a good arrangement, as the old people can thus, when they will, be alone, and also can, when they will, enjoy society and books in a large, light, warm room, furnished with tables, chairs, or benches.

I have also heard of various other benevolent institutions in the city, which I yet hope to visit. And in every one of these the Quakers take part, either as founders or directors, and in every case the same spirit of human love is observable as animated the first lawgiver of Pennsyl vania, the founder of Philadelphia, William Penn; and the more I see of the Quakers the better I like them. The men have something sly and humorous about them. a sort of dry humor which is very capital; they are fond of telling a good story, commonly illustrative of the peaceprinciple, and which is to prove how well this and worldly wisdom may go together, and how triumphantly they are doing battle in the world. Christian love shows itself in them, seasoned with a little innocent, worldly cunning in manner, and a delicate sharpness of temper. The women please me particularly, from that quiet refinement of demeanor, both inward and outward, which I have already observed; their expression is sensible; nobody ever hears them ask senseless questions. One meets with many striking countenances among them, with remarkably lovely eyes, purely cut features, and clear complexions. The interest which the Quaker women take in the affairs of their native land, and especially in those which have a great human purpose, is also a feature which distinguishes them from the ordinary class of ladies.

The Quakers have always been the best friends of the negro slave, and the fugitive slaves from the Slave States find, at the present time, their most powerful protectors and advocates among the Friends. Many of the Quaker women are distinguished by their gifts as public speakers, and have often come forward in public assemblies as forcible advocates of some question of humanity. At the present time they take the lead in the anti-slavery party, and a celebrated speaker on this subject, Lucretia Mott, was among one of my late visitors here.. She is a handsome lady, of about fifty, with fine features, splendid eyes, VOL. 1.-S

and a very clear, quiet, but decided manner-crystal-like, I might say.

June 25th. Yesterday, midsummer-day, I visited the old Swedish church here; for the Swedes were the first settlers on the River Delaware, and were possessed of land from Trenton Falls to the sea, and it was from them that William Penn bought the ground on which Philadelphia now stands. It was the great Gustavus Adolphus who, together with Oxenstjerna, sketched out a plan for a Swedish. colony in the New World, and the king himself became surety to the royal treasury for the sum of 400,000 rixdollars for the carrying it out. Persons of all conditions were invited to co-operate in the undertaking. The colony was to exist by free labor. "Slaves," said they, "cost a great deal, work unwillingly, and soon perish from hard usage. The Swedish people are laborious and intelligent, and we shall certainly gain more by a free people with wives and children." The Swedes found a new paradise in the New World, and believed that the proposed colony would become a secure asylum for the wives and daughters of those who had become fugitives by religious persecution or war; would be a blessing at once for individual man and the whole Protestant world. "It may prove an advantage to the whole of oppressed Christendom,” said the great monarch, who, in his schemes for the honor of Sweden, always united with them the well-being of humanity.

After the king's death this plan was carried out under the direction of Oxenstjerna. Land was purchased along the southern banks of the Delaware, and peopled by Swedish emigrants. The colony called itself New Sweden, and enjoyed a period of prosperity and increasing importance, engaged in agriculture and other peaceful employment, during which it erected the fortress of Christiana, as a defense against the Dutch who inhabited the northern banks of the river. The number of Swedes did not

exceed seven hundred, and when contests arose with the more powerful colony of New Netherland, and the Swedish. governor, Rising, attacked the Dutch fortress Casimir, the Dutch avenged themselves by surprising the Swedish colony with an overwhelming force, and they submitted. The Swedish arms in Europe had by this time ceased to inspire respect on the other side the Atlantic, and spite of their protests the Swedes were brought under the jurisdiction of the Dutch. The connection with the mother country ceased by degrees. And after the death of the last Swedish clergyman who emigrated hither-Collin-and who died at a great age, the Swedish congregation and church have been under the care of an American clergyman. Mr. Clay, the present minister, invited me to meet at his house all the descendants of the earliest Swedish settlers whom he knew. It was a company of from fifty to sixty, and I shook hands with many agreeable persons, but who had nothing Swedish about them, excepting their family names, of which I recognized many. But no traditions of their emigration hither remained; language, appearance, all had entirely merged into that of the now prevailing Anglo-Saxon race. The church clock alone had something truly Swedish about it, something of the character of the peasant's clock in its physiognomy, and was called Jockum.

The church, a handsome and substantial, though small building of brick, was ancient only in its exterior. The interior was new, and very much ornamented. A large book was placed upon a sort of tall stand in the middle of the church, and upon its page might be read in large letters, which however had been somewhat altered by restoration, "The people who dwelt in darkness have seen a great light." And this inscription, together with the old church at Wilmington, in Delaware, and a few family. names, are all that remain of the colony of New Sweden on the eastern shores of the New World. Yet no! not