Dutch. He appears to have been seriously inclined from his youth, having imbibed religious impressions as early as his twelfth year, which were soon afterwards confirmed by the ministry of Thomas Loe, an eminent preacher among the people called Quakers, then newly associated in religious fellowship. In his fifteenth year, he was, notwithstanding, entered as a gentleman commoner of Christ-church, Oxford, where, meeting with some other students who were devoutly inclined, they ventured to hold private meetings among themselves, wherein they both preached and prayed. This gave great offence to the heads of the college, by whom these zealous tyros were at first only confined for non-conformity; but persisting in their religious exercises, they were finally expelled the university. On his return home, his father endeavored in vain to divert him from his religious pursuits, as being likely to stand in the way of his promotion in the world; and at length, finding him inflexible in what he now conceived to be his religious duty, beat him severely, and turned him out of doors. Relenting, however, at the intercession of his mother, and hoping to gain his point by other means, he sent his son to Paris, in company with some persons of quality; whence he returned so well skilled in the French language, and other polite accomplishments, that he was again joyfully received at home. After his return from France, he was admitted of Lincoln's Inn, with a view of studying the law, and continued there till his twenty-second year, when his father committed to him the management of a considerable estate in Irelanda circumstance which unexpectedly proved the occasion of his finally adhering to the despised cause of the Quakers, and devoting himself to a religious life. At Cork, he met again with Thomas Loe, the person whose preaching had affected him so early in life. At a meeting in that city, Loe began his declaration with these penetrating words, "There is a faith that overcomes the world, and there is a faith that is overcome by the world;" which so affected Penn, that from that time he constantly attended the meetings of the Quakers, though in a time of hot persecution. He was soon afterwards, with many others, taken at a meeting in Cork, and carried before the mayor, by whom they were committed to prison; but young Penn was soon released, on application to the earl of Orrery, then lord president of Munster. His father, being informed of

his conduct, remanded him home; and, finding him unalterably determined to abide by his own convictions of duty, in respect to plainness of speech and deportment, he would have compounded with him, if he would only have consented to remain uncovered before the king, the duke (afterwards James II), and himself. Being disappointed in this, he could no longer endure the sight of his son, and a second time drove him from his family. Yet after a while, becoming convinced of his integrity, he permitted him to return; and though he never openly countenanced him, he would use his interest to get him released, when imprisoned for his attendance at religious meetings. In the year 1668, in the twenty-fourth year of his age, Penn first appeared as a minister and an author; and it was on account of his second essay, entitled the Sandy Foundation Shaken, that he was imprisoned in the Tower, where he remained seven months, during which time he wrote his most celebrated work, No Cross no Crown, and finally obtained his release from confinement by an exculpatory vindication, under the title of Innocency with her open Face. In 1670, the meetings of dissenters were forbidden, under severe penalties. The Quakers, however, believing it their religious duty, continued to meet as usual; and when forcibly kept out of their meeting-houses, they assembled as near to them as they could in the street. At one of these meetings, William Penn preached to the people thus assembled for divine worship; for which pious action he was committed to Newgate, and, at the next session at the Old Bailey, was indicted for "being present at, and preaching to, an unlawful, seditious, and riotous assembly." He pleaded his own cause, though menaced by the recorder, and was finally acquitted by the jury; but he was, nevertheless, detained in Newgate, and the jury fined. Sir William died this year, fully reconciled to his son, to whom he left a plentiful estate, taking leave of him in these memorable words: "Son William, let nothing in this world tempt you to wrong your conscience. So will you keep peace at home, which will be a feast to you in a day of trouble." Shortly after this event, Penn travelled, in the exercise of his ministry, into Holland and Germany. In the year 1672, he married Gulielma Maria Springett, whose father (sir William) having been killed at the siege of Bamber, in the civil wars, her mother had married Isaac Penington, of Chalfont, in Bucks, an eminent minister

and writer among the Quakers. In 1677, in company with George Fox and Robert Barclay, the celebrated apologist, he again set sail on a religious visit to Holland and Germany, where he and his friends were received by many pious persons as the ministers of Christ, particularly at Herwerden, by the princess Elizabeth of the Rhine, daughter of the king of Bohemia, and grand-daughter of James I of England. The persecutions of dissenters continuing to rage, notwithstanding their repeated applications to parliament for sufferance and protection, William Penn now turned his thoughts towards a settlement in the new world, as a place where himself and his friends might enjoy their religious opinions without molestation, and where an example might be set to the nations of a just and righteous govern ment. "There may be room there," said he, "though not here, for such a holy experiment." He therefore, in 1681, solicited a patent from Charles II, for a province in North America, which the king readily granted, in consideration of his father's services, and of a debt still due to him from the crown. Penn soon after published a description of the province, proposing easy terms of settlement to such as might be disposed to go thither. He also wrote to the Indian natives, informing them of his desire to hold his possession with their consent and goodwill. He then drew up the Fundamental Constitution of Pennsylvania, and the following year he published the Frame of Government, a law of which code held out a greater degree of religious liberty than had at that time been allowed in the world. "All persons living in this province, who confess and acknowledge the One Almighty and Eternal God to be the Creator, Upholder, and Ruler of the world, and that hold themselves obliged in conscience to live peaceably and justly in civil society, shall in no wise be molested or prejudiced for their religious persuasion or practice, in matters of faith and worship; nor shall they be compelled at any time to frequent or maintain any religious worship, place or ministry whatsoever." Upon the publication of these proposals, many respectable families removed to the new province; the city of Philadelphia was laid out, upon the banks of the Delaware; and in 1682, the proprietor visited his newly-acquired territory, where he remained about two years, adjusting its concerns, and establishing a friendly intercourse with his colonial neighbors; during which period no less

than fifty sail arrived with settlers from England, Ireland, Wales, Holland, and Germany. Soon after Penn returned to England, king Charles died; and the respect which James II bore to the late admiral, who had recommended his son to his favor, procured to him free access at court. He made use of this advantage to solicit the discharge of his persecuted brethren, fifteen hundred of whom remained in prison at the decease of the late king. In 1686, having taken lodgings at Kensington, to be near the court, he published a Persuasive to Moderation towards Dissenting Christians, &c., humbly submitted to the King and his great Council, which is thought to have hastened, if it did not occasion, the king's proclamation for a general pardon, which was followed the next year by his suspension of the penal laws. At the revolution, in 1688, Penn's intimacy with the abdicated monarch created suspicions, of which he repeatedly cleared himself before authority, until he was accused by a profligate wretch, whom the parliament afterwards declared to be a cheat and an impostor. Not caring to expose himself to the oaths of such a man, he withdrew from public notice, till 1693. In that year, through the mediation of his friends at court, he was once more admitted to plead his own cause before the king and council, and was again acquitted of all suspicion of guilt. The most generally known production of his temporary seclusion bears the title of Fruits of Solitude, in Reflections and Maxims relating to the Conduct of Human Life. Not long after his restoration to society, he lost his wife, Gulielma, to which he said all his other troubles were as nothing in comparison. He travelled, however, the same year, in the west of England, and in the next prosecuted an application to parliament for the relief of his friends, the Quakers, in the case of oaths. In the year 1696, he married a second wife, Hannah, the daughter of Thomas Callowhill, an eminent merchant of Bristol, and soon after buried his eldest son, Springett, a remarkably pious and promising youth. In 1698, he travelled in Ireland, and resided the following year at Bristol. In 1699, he again sailed for Pennsylvania, with his second wife and family, intending to make his province the place of their future residence; but advantage was taken of his absence to undermine proprietary governments, under color of the king's prerogative, and he thought it necessary to return to England again in 1701. After

of Virginia, and west by the latter and the state of Ohio. It lies nearly in the form of a parallelogram. Darby, in his Geographical View, states that its greatest length is due west from Bristol, on the Delaware river, to the eastern border of Ohio county, in Virginia, through 5° 56′ of longitude, along N. latitude 40° 9′. This distance, on that line of latitude, is equal to 315 American statute miles. The greatest breadth is 176 miles, from the Virginia line to the extreme northern angle, on lake Erie; and the mean breadth, 157. The same writer calculates the area at above 47,000 square miles, and 30,080,000 statute acres. The original Swedish colony came over in 1638, under the government and protection of Sweden. The Dutch and the Finns had also settled on the Delaware, before the British conquest of the New Netherlands, in 1664. In 1682, William Penn founded a colony, having previously obtained a charter from Charles II, which put him in possession of the soil and government of the country. This charter was granted in consideration of an unsettled pecuniary account between the government and the estate of Penn's father. The emigration from Wales into Pennsylvania was as early as 1683. The emigrants purchased a large body of land, and called the several settlements after favorite places in Wales. The Indian right was respected by William Penn, and his sense of justice induced him to make an equitable purchase from the aborigines, notwithstanding his charter; and the same policy was pursued by the constituted government after the revolution, as the state of Pennsylvania made new purchases from the native proprietors at a fair price, and in open treaty, in 1784. Though the state of Pennsylvania might have considered the proprietary claims as a royalty, to which the independent government could lawfully succeed, yet, as a peculiar acknowledgment of the merits and claims of William Penn and his family, by an act of the legislature, the sum of £130,000 sterling, together with a confirmation of title to all the manor lands, which were ten per cent. on all surveyed lands in the province, was to be offered to the Penn family, which offer was by them accepted. This was a liberal compensation for revolutionary losses, considering that, in the year 1712, William Penn offered to the queen of England the government and soil of the province for the sum of £12,000, payable in four years. This was certainly owing to his pecu

niary embarrassments; and although he actually entered into a contract for this purpose, yet an apoplectic attack rendered him incapable of perfecting the legal forms. The litigated question with the state of Connecticut touching the right of territory in the northern part of the state, was depending from the year 1750 until a few years since, when the public and private rights of soil were settled in favor of Pennsylvania, under conciliations and restrictions, determined by special acts of the Pennsylvania legislature and the decisions of the supreme court of the U. States. The seat of the state government was transferred from Philadelphia to Lancaster in the year 1799, and the progress of improvement and population caused it, in 1812, to be removed to Harrisburg, where handsome buildings are erected for the accommodation of the legislature and the officers of the government. The whole state is divided into 52 counties, viz. Adams, Alleghany, Armstrong, Beaver, Bedford, Berks, Bradford, Bucks, Butler, Cambria, Centre, Chester, Clearfield, Columbia, Crawford, Cumberland, Dauphin, Delaware, Erie, Fayette, Franklin, Green, Huntingdon, Indiana, Jefferson, Juniatta, Lancaster, Lebanon, Lehigh, Luzerne, Lycoming, M'Kean, Mercer, Mifflin, Montgomery, Northampton, Northumberland, Perry, Philadelphia, Pike, Potter, Schuylkill, Somerset, Susquehannah, Tioga, Union,Vinango, Warren, Washington, Wayne, Westmoreland, York. There are three incorporated cities in this state-Philadelphia, Pittsburg and Lancaster. There are very few counties which have not a borough and many populous towns, the most considerable of which are Harrisburg, Reading, Easton, Carlisle, York, Chambersburg, Brownsville, Washington, &c. By an estimate of the population in 1782, it was supposed to be 330,000. By the census of 1790, it was ascertained to be 434,373. In 1800, it was 602,545. In 1810, it was 810,091. In 1820, it was 1,049,458; and in 1831, it was 1,347,672. The government of Pennsylvania consists of three branches-legislative, executive and judicial. The legislature consists of a senate and a house of representatives. By the present constitution, the house of representatives cannot exceed 100, and are chosen annually. The senate, whose number cannot be more than one third of the lower house, are chosen for four years, one fourth of their body annually; at this period both branches are full. The governor is elected for three years, but cannot hold

the office more than nine years in twelve. These elections are all by the people and by ballot. All judicial officers are appointed by the governor during good behavior, and are removable by address of both houses or by impeachment. The inhabitants are principally descended from the English, Welsh, Irish, Scotch and Germans, also French, Swedes, and a few Dutch. The language is generally a pure English, but, in many counties, the German prevails to a considerable extent. The character of the Pennsylvanians is somewhat diversified by difference of extraction and various modes of education, but this is chiefly in minor points. The facilities of receiving education are great. There is a university in Philadelphia, and colleges have been established at Carlisle, Canonsburg, Washington, Pittsburg, and Meadville, and provision has been made by the legislature for the establishment of an academy in every county in the state. There are also flourishing Moravian schools at Bethlehem, Nazareth and Litiz; and, by the will of the late Stephen Girard, of Philadelphia, a fund of $2,000,000 (to be augmented, if necessary, by rents of real property, and residuary personal estate) has been appropriated for the establishment of a college for the education of orphan children. The different religious denominations in Pennsylvania are Presbyterians, Methodists, German Calvinists, German Lutherans, Friends, Episcopalians, Baptists, Roman Catholics, Seceders, Covenanters, Universalists, Swedenborgians, Jews and Unitarians. With regard to the face of the country, the mountains strike the eye, at the first glance on a map, as the most prominent natural features. The Appalachian system in the U. States generally extends in a direction deviating not very essentially from south-west to north-east, but in Pennsylvania, the whole system is inflected from that course, and traverses the state in a serpentine direction. Towards the south boundary, the mountains lie about northnorth-east, gradually inclining more eastwardly as they penetrate northward, and, in the central counties, many of the chains lie nearly east and west. But, as they extend towards the northern border of the state, they again gradually incline to the north-east, and enter New York and New Jersey in nearly that direction. The principal ridges on the east side of the Susquehannah, are the Kittatinny or Blue mountains, behind which, and nearly parallel to them, are Peters, Tuscarora and Nescopeck mountains. On the west

side of the Susquehannah are the Kittatinny ridges, comprising the North or Blue, the Horse and the Tuscarora mountains, Sherman's hill, Sideling hill, Ragged, Great Warrior's, Tussey's and Wills's mountains; then the great Alleghany ridge, which, being the largest, gives name to the whole; and west of this are the Chestnut ridges, including the Laurel hill. Between the Juniatta river and the west branch of the Susquehannah are Jack's, Tussey's, Nittany and Bald Eagle mountains. The mountain area has been estimated at 6750 square miles, or very nearly one seventh part of the superficies of the state. Some of these mountains admit of cultivation almost to their summits, and the valleys between them are often of a rich black soil, suited to the various kinds of grass and grain. The other parts of the state are generally level or agreeably diversified with hills and vales. The principal rivers are the Delaware, Susquehannah, Schuylkill, Lehigh, Alleghany, Monongahela, Ohio, Juniatta, Youhiogeny, and Clarion, formerly designated as Toby's creek. Besides these main streams, Pennsylvania is watered by numerous large creeks and rivulets, to as great a degree as the same extent of country in any part of the U. States. This state deserves credit for her numerous improvements in turnpike roads, canals, rail-roads and bridges, which have been constructed in a superior style of excellence and durability. The first turnpike road in the U. States was made in Pennsylvania. (For further information with regard to these internal improvements, see the various heads.) The soil of Pennsylvania is much diversified; in some parts it is barren, but a great proportion of it is fertile, and a considerable part very excellent. West of the mountains, the soil of the first quality is a deep black mould, equal in fertility to any part of the U. States. Wheat is the most important article of produce. Indian corn, rye, buckwheat, barley, oats, flax, hemp, beans, peas and potatoes are extensively cultivated. Apples, cherries, pears, peaches and plums are abundant. The trees natural to the soil are hemlock, pine, hickory, walnut, wild cherry, locust, maple, chestnut, mulberry, oak, gum sassafras, elm and poplar. The magnolia glauca grows in low grounds, and the acuminata attains to a great height among the western mountains. Grapes are common, and some of them, mellowed by frost, with the addition of sugar, make a pleasant wine. The wild plum and crab apple