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Lane & Scott and J. W. Lauderbach. Publishers. A Century After : Picturesque Glimpses Philadelphia ^-^^^ Pennsylvania INCLIUING FAIRMOUXT, THE WISSAHICKON, AND (JTHER RUMAXTIC LOCALITIES, WIIH THE CITIES AND LANDSCAPES OF THE STATE. A PICTORIAL REPRESENTATION 111- Scenery, Architecture, Life, Manners and Character. Edited bv Edward Straii.vn. pufi.y J* 2-^,,L ^■'z. JllustraUd wUh Engravins;! hy LaUDERBACH. from Designs by THOMAS A/OKA.V. F. O. C. DaRI.EV, J. D. IVOODWARD, James Hamilton, f. /?. Schell. E. B. Bensell, n: L. Shepfard. and other Eminent Artists. PHILADELPHIA: Pl'BMSHF.D RY ALLEN, LANE & SCOTT AND J. W. L.\UDERBACII. No. 233 South Fifth Stkebt. 1875- Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1875, by ALLEN, LANE & SCOTT AND J. W. LAUDERBACH, in tlie Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. THE SCHUYLKILL FROM LANSDOWNE. PREFACE. THIS work explains its own plan, with the best eloquence ot pen and pencil; and, like the City and Region to which it is dedicated, is a self-demonstra- ting Panorama. Yet a preface is as proper to a book as marrow to a bone. The "Pith of a bone" being, as Rabelais observes, the condensed essence of the nourishment that is in it. It is fitting, then, to express in a few words the plan of this publication, which is a delineation of Philadelphia — the city fitly chosen for the nation's centenary festival — as it has been developed by a hundred years of the freedom proclaimed from its own Town Hall. To this development nothing contributed so much as the wealth of Pennsyl- vania in two minerals far more precious than gold — Iron and Coal. These riches, discovered long after that Independence whose declaration is the pride of Phila- delphia, came in like a dowry offered by Nature, expressly that the city, already most precious to the nation from moral considerations, should be fitly furnished with material wealth to maintain its dignity. It is, then, especially appropriate that the State which confers the real benefits of opulence should be depicted beside the City which created the ideal of Independence. Philadelphia, therefore, with the noble Commonwealth in which it reposes, the sister cities which vie with it in developing Pennsylvania's mineral and agricultural wealth, the beauties of Allegheny landscapes, the charm of interior valleys and rivers, are all eminently appropriate to a work of this memorial character. There is no other city where the varieties of wild landscape so closely sur- round and so boldly invade a civilization given over to material industries. Besides the broad Delaware, the exquisite Schuylkill, a stream far more beautiful than the Arno, bathes one side of the cit>', and into this Italian sheet of water slides the wild Wissahickon, coming down pure from its ". savage groro-es and cold springs" as primitive as a stream of the wilderness, yet easily accessible to the 8 PREFACE. most sedentary citizen. The conditions of climate, which blend at this particular spot the characters of the arctic and semi-tropical regions, combining the summer southern fruits, birds, and insects, with the sports of northern snow and ice, add peculiar variety to its artistic aspects. That among the edifices of Philadelphia is the cradle of our national liberties, is perhaps honor enough for any metropolis ; but it is to be remarked that, in addition to Independence Hall and other historical specimens of pre-Revolutionar)- architecture, Philadelphia contains the noblest specimens of pure Greek style in the country : and a wealth of private homes, its greatest pride, the models of middle-class comfort to all the world. To illustrate this City and this State with all the resources of Art is the design of the present work. For that purpose the most skillful artists in the country have long been at work, and it is the privilege ot the publishers to as- sure the public that the engravings prepared for "A Century After" are unap- proached for artistic beauty, spirit, and accuracy by any previous jjublication. The metropolitan character and productive arts ot Philadelphia ; its patriotic position in reviving the American commercial marine destroyed in the late war, by the equipment of a fleet of European steamers ; its importance as a nucleus of railways which connect the whole country together; its world-famous colleges, whence have sprung Schools of Law and Medicine that lead all others on the continent; these, with other features which give it intellectual or physical impor- tance, will be portrayed or described. Unique as this Manufacturing Centre of a free Commonwealth is on the globe to-day or in all past time, the moment has come to fix its image in the eyes of the people. With its almost complete two centuries of existence and its hundred years of independence, it is now read}^ to receive the homage of its children who love it, in the shape of a descriptive and pictorial portrait. A Century After. VESTIBULE, IXDEI'ENDENCE HALL. INDEPENDENCE HALL. A PICTURE.SOUE bluft" covered with pine-trees, on the Delaware, was chosen ■^ in 1682 as the site of Philadelphia. The first inhabitants lived, not uncom- fortably, in caves hollowed out in this bank. Rapidly advancing from east to west, Philadelphia is a page that has been written, like a Hebrew manuscript, from right to left. lo A C/^.VrrA')' AFTER. Colonies always plant cities in a regular g-eometrical form ; it is the old feudal and barbarian systems that ha\e left us the agglomerated streets of Europe and Asia — so artistic, and so inconvenient. Penn laid out his capital as methodically as the Romans did theirs when they used to colonize. He ruled his streets straight out towards the west, naming them from the trees they displaced, such as cedar, spruce, and sassafras; not, as Mr. Longfellow has it, to appease the dryads whose haunts he molested, for he had a horror of the heathen mythology, but because he meant his city to be a rural city, and to rustle eternally with the breath of trees and shrubbery. The lateral streets he intersected with others running nearly north and south: and in designating these his imagination seems to have failed : for he gave up naming the streets, and simply numbered them. A Court-House was completed in 1710, and sheltered the Assembly, until 1735. This structure being outgrown, the building now known as Independence Hall, but originally as the State-House, was begun in 1732. The site of the new structure was selected on Chestnut Street, which thenceforth and until now is the principal thoroughfare. The location was then rather beyond the growth of the cit\\ and the edifice remained for some time the westernmost that the capital could boast. A little tavern — a suburban garden structure — was opposite on Chestnut Street, to which in 1701 Penn, the Founder, liked often to Avalk for an innocent glass of home-brewed beer: and the fine trees belonging to this hostelry long swept the old hall with their shadows. The last of the primeval elms from the inn-yard was felled in 1 8 1 8 : the genial Governor, Richard Penn, in' memory of his worth)- ancestor, had paid it and its fellows the tribute of a tear : as its long branches crashed against the ea.stern wing of the .State-House, the citizens looked on with thoughtful reeret, feeling that it made a link directly between the epoch of Independence and the Foundation. Often had the litde grove .shadowed W'illiam Penn, as he made the inn a station in his suburban walks, giving "black Alice" her punctual penny in return for the live coal for his pipe, "And quoting Horace o'er her home-brewed lieer. " The ancient Court-House, for which Independence Hall is the substitute, after standing one Inmdrcd and twenty-seven years at .Second and Market Streets, was pulled down in 1S37 : and its belfry and arched passage-ways, — its broad sweep of external stairways, . descending to the pavement in double curves from the balcony on whicli W'liitfield had stood to preach, — vanished as other colonial IXDEFEXDENCE HALL. II relics have done. The State-House, though but four or five blocks away, was so entirely beyond the heart of the town as to seem like a citadel without the walls. There were no pavements on the streets around it, and the children jealously watched its rise from the field where they had been wont to go whortle- berrying. The architect was Andrew Hamilton, and it was finished, according to the original plan, but without the steeple, in 1744, after twelve years of effort. There is no more sturdy style in the world than that of " a solid red-brick .^ mansion of the Georgian era," as an English writer relishingly remarks. CORRIDOR, INDEPENDENCE HALL. The architecture of the Augustan age of " ' England, w^hich got its finishing touches from Pope and Horace Walpole, and culminated in Blenheim, is singularly devoid of pretense, convenient, snug, and satisfying; while its dumpy ornaments of balus- trades and urns, marble trimmings, string-courses, tablets, corner-dressings, and lintels with wedge-shaped keystone, have an expression all their own, and the red of its bricks acquires with age a becoming gloom that only needs letting alone to be perfect. The present steeple, erected forty-six years ago in the taste of the original, shows the more decorative side of the Queen Anne 12 A CENTURY AFTER. style in its wooden urns that hold nothing, its Ionic pilasters sketched out on the tower, and its wreath around the clock-face ; the halls inside are ornamented, like some of Hogarth's interiors, with mouldings, panelings, and grotesque faces above the doorways. Altogether, the Hall is a richly satisfactory specimen of the palace architecture at the close of Queen Anne's great reign of victories. Mayor Allen opened it with a grand banquet, in honor of Governor John Penn, in the autumn of 1735. The fine building then sat in a muddy desolation; in the square on either side was a long shed, for storage purposes, and for the bivouacs of the Indians, who used to rush to the Provincial shelter at every difficulty, and who loved to vary with the wonders ot the town the ennui of their noble and vacant lives. The building was afterwards extended with clerks' bureaus and legal offices so as to span the whole block ; an addition without a gain. Otherwise it stands, much as it stood in the Revolution, and looks equally sturdy and uncompromising in the leafy shadows of summer or hooded with snow in winter. When England, almost simultaneously with its acquisition of India, was to lose America, the building put up for such different purposes was ready to shelter the sublime treason of 1776. On the 4th of July of that year the Declaration of Independence, drafted by Jefferson, Franklin, Livingston, Sherman and Adams, was adopted by Congress, and ordered to be engrossed. It was pub- licly read on the 8th, from the platform of the observatory erected in the State-House yard, for watching the Transit of Venus, by the American Philosophical Society. The principles on which the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania was founded were a direct preparation for the Independence declared from her metropolis. Penn's theories of jurisprudence were imbibed from Locke, and from Algernon Sidney, who, in a year or two after his Quaker friend's departure, died for them on a scaffold. "Obedience without liberty is slavery," was a maxim of Penn's; and his foundation of absolute religious and civil freedom was the highway he built up in the wilderness for the great advent of Liberty, which afterwards illumined his metropolis. Never was there arranged by fate a correspondence more apposite than that the City of Penn should enunciate the principles of Franklin. Penn's doctrines were the terror of the ver)- monarch from whom he derived his charter; their enforcement in practice had dethroned and slain that monarch's father; and in their due course they developed and blossomed into American Independence. In Landor's " Imaginary Conversations" there is a fine dialogue between Penn and Peterborough, the friend of Swift and Pope. The scene of their talk is laid among the forests of PennsjKania, and is founded on a passage of Spence, where bTATE-HOUbli. 14 A CENTURY AFTER. Peterborough says he took a trip with Penn to his new colony. As Landor supplies the conversation between the aristocrat and the friend of freedom, it goes pretty much in favor of the latter. As the two discuss, from their horses' saddles, the principles of government, Penn sends forth, over his black mare's ears, the opinion that it is men of genius who are wanted in a government, fully as much as what are called men of business. "As if men of genius," indignantly cries Penn, "were not men of business in the highest sense of the word — of business in which the state and society are implicated for ages !" This golden definition was well illustrated in the revolutionary era, when the finest body of men at that time sitting in any of the parliaments of the world con- ceived and maintained the theory of our Republic. These statesmen had the courage to break an old order, the valor to maintain the new one, and the wisdom to fortify it with laws and a constitution. The first and second Congresses of our nation comprised the flower of the characters of that age, an assembly more perfect in the ideal qualities of such a body than any Roman senate. As a whole body they ruled higher for talents, firmness and good judgment, than any national assem- blage known to history. "Lord Chatham said," remarks Franklin in a letter, "he thought it the most honorable assembly of men that had ever been known;" and he doubles this valuable opinion of the great Commoner with the corresponding sentiments, worth more to his mind than ours, of Lord Cobham, the Duke of Richmond, and the Duke of Manchester. But the external treatment of Independence Hall, rather than what was done in it and the interior aspect, is the business of the present paragraphs. The men of the early Congresses, and all that they dared and did within the walls, will be more appropriately considered when we come to visit the inside of the building. Valuable museums of sacred relics are now kept up in the east hall, where the Continental Congress met, and in the corresponding chamber across the corridor. The overwhelming associations connected with these places will be treated of at a future opportunity, and the subject, now, will go no farther than the vestibule. In that vestibule, visible even from the street, is seen an object of the highest interest, — the bell which tolled triumphantly while John Nixon read the Decla- ration in the State-House yard. When the Pennsylvanians were building their State edifice, they ordered an English bell. It was finished to order and brought across in 1752; but the tones learned in Britain could not be repeated in the land prepared for Democracy. The bell, on its first trial in this country, was found to have lost its voice. It was ordered to be recast, and there was skill enough in the colony to do the task; the i6 A CENTURY AFTER. bell now examined by visitors is, therefore, American in its workmanship, as by right of its national office it ought to be. Pass and Stow were the artificers who under- took to remodel this largest mass of bell-metal in the colonies, and the imperfection caused by too sturdy a stroke of the clapper on the trial passed away, with the British form and outline of the work. For the "greatest bell in English America," as the Speaker of that day called it, a new device was chosen ; this was the selection of the same Speaker, and the motto adopted shows the irresistible leaven of free- dom among the people, even a quarter of a century in advance of the Declara- tion. The words executed in relief around the bell are from the tenth verse of the twenty-fifth chapter of Leviticus: "Proclaim Liberty throughout the Land unto all the Inhabitants thereof" It was with this device of good Speaker Norris's choice that the great bronze mouth was encircled when it pealed forth the new liberty to the crowds in the square. The bell in being remelted had corrected its tones — whether this indicates that the citizens threw their spoons and jewelry into the melting pot is not known ; but Norris, in a letter, says it surpassed the im- ported one, "which was too high and brittle." The bell has long been reheved from active service ; a deep chiseled cut is seen in one side of it ; having uttered the magic sound of " Liberty," it is now absolved from all meaner utterance: and it sits in its stout old age like a dumb Invalide, uttering to the mind a clearer sound through its inscription than it ever uttered to the ear with its clapper. v^S^^ OLD CHURCHES. T HE oldest in the city is the Swedes' Church, on Swanson Street, below Chris- tian. In the Swedish villa1 tulip-poplar, and other trees The terraces to the east are set out the usual flowering shrubs, such spirea, pyrus japonica, wygelia, lilac, deutzia, and forsythea. But the shrubbery and deciduous trees must yield in dignity to the pines. A finer grove of these impressive trees is seldom seen. The top of the Hill seems like an acre cut out of the deepest recess of a primitive Maine forest. The principal pair of pine-trees — known to be older than revolutionary date — are celebrating their supra-centennial years, from May to May, in thick confused whispers far up in the air. The remaining nobles of the company are but litde younger. Like all pines of great age, the foliage begins its growth at a con- siderable height. Successive loppings of decayed branches are always necessary as such trees grow older, gradually denuding the trunk to a more and more lofty point. The majesty of a century-plant of the coniferous kind is therefore a dif- ferent thing from the beautj- of a fresh )-oung evergreen, bathing the earth beneath FAIRMOUNT PARK. 43 its brooding boughs with dew and shadow. These great pines are Hving pillars, hrml\- planted like the columns of a cathedral, and lifting up rich capitals, wrought with a leafage diat has proved to be more enduring than marble often is. From the far-away tops proceeds a never-ceasing murmur. In a gale, such as frequently passes down tlie river and cuts the top of Lemon Hill, the volume and energy of the sound are really startling. It is impossible, on merely shutting the eyes at such a time, not to be persuaded that you are upon some rocky coast, hearing the tumble of a hea\'y sea after a storm. The rise and fall of the roar, as well as its character of sound, make the illusion perfect. You open your eyes — the sky is deep blue and full of merry winds, and the birds are boldly rocking on the boughs, ready to sing in the pauses of the gale. It is but a storm of joy. The tempests that assault the Alpine altitude of Lemon Hill are always of a comical cast. The summer showers, abundant enough in our changeable climate, are certain to take all the visitors by surprise. Suddenly, while the young peo- ple are bending over their croquet, and the )ounger people are chasing their trundle-hoops and butterflies, and the youngest people of all are gravely riding their wooden hobby-horses in the carrousels, the air darkens: a hood of clouds has rapidl)- drawn itself over the scene, the sports are fitfully lighted up by a quick glimmer, like a reflection from a mischievous mirror, and the first drops fall, surprisingly big and ominous. Then the rush begins. The girls run in to the mansion shrieking and lauyhinof. Those who ha\e washable dresses let them trail over the wet grass, those who are in silk quickly pin the skirts over their heads, and arrive at the house like so many dominos thronging in to a masked ball. The young fellows come after, loaded down with implements of the games. The honest old house suddenly becomes juvenile again, being filled in all its pores and recesses with youth and laughter. The lower piazza chokes up: the upstairs balconies foam over with gay and radiant heads. Meanwhile the rain increases, and at length comes down in straight, solid cylinders like slate-pencils, that dint round holes into the ground. The pines are angrily roaring, and the thunder ratdes from time to time. The imprisoned crowd are eating ice- creams, and imperdnently regarding the storm as a melodrama, got up for their particular entertainment. When the lightning breaks, there is a sudden vision — the Schuylkill flashing like an iron shield, the village of Greek porticoes and pediments which makes up the water-works suddenly gleaming with the lustre of ivory, and relieved against the green side of the reservoir like a cameo. The long bridge at Fairmount shows all its arches, resembling the sockets of a row of teeth, and, so to speak, grins from bank to bank; then the flash is gone, and the 44 A CENTURY AFTER. landscape is dark again. The Bastile of prisoners presently grows uncomfortable — the time is long, the crowd is stifling, the provisions, perhaps, as will happen in a siege, have given out. Then, when it is least expected, the sun breaks forth merrily once more; the trees around the porticoes wave their branches, heavy with rain, and frame the prospect with arches of dripping silver; the river turns blue, the prospect of the water-works and distant city basks placidly in the late light, and the descending sun catches on the distant spires and crosses and makes them glitter against the sinking clouds, while the glad youngsters participate in a general jail-delivery. Lemon Hill on its eastern side descends by terraces in the direction of the Park entrance on Brown street. Here the stroller may slake his thirst at a little drinking-fount, enclosed in a marble niche, more convenient than the neighboring fish-pond, and yielding a pleasanter flavor than the chalybeate spring. The Garden and Lemon Hill are adjacent to the thickly-built part of the city; they are foot-beaten, crowded and democratic. Leaving out of the question for the present the larger breadths of West Park, we will prove that wild and lonely scenery can be viewed without crossing the river, and will introduce the reader to Wissahickon Creek, which enters the Schuylkill on this side at the upper end of East Park, within two miles of the entrance. FOOT OF LEMON HILL. nPHE Wissahickon is a stream which em- phatically contradicts the general rule that water- courses dry up with the settlement of a country. When a rivulet has been directed through a wooded tract, the removal of the woods will usually destroy the rivulet. The present example is an exception, and there is deeper water in the Wissahickon than when the Indians made it their favorite -V.','.V'C'-'>! 46 A CENTURY AFTER. hunting-course. The cause of the anomaly is this : a quantity of new streets have been cut through the heisjhts about Germantown and Chestnut Hill, developing in their excavation numerous natural springs ; these are now drained into the Wissahickon, enriching its resources, and creating the strange instance of a torrent actually augmented by civilization. Four hamlets, in 1683, composed the township bought from Penn by a well- to-do and cultured band of Germans, incorporated as the Frankfort Company. Three of them were named in the German tongue, Sommerhausen, Crefeld, and Krisheim; the fourth in English, Germantown. The settlement, only a year younger than Philadelphia, proceeded to advance, neck-and-neck with the capital. The emigrants were affecdonately attached to Penn, who had converted some of them to his doctrine in old Europe ; his visit to the original Krisheim, in Ger- many, had been paid in June, 1677. The Frankfort Company were the pioneers of German emigration to this country, since become so enormous. Their agent in America was a young Doctor of Laws, of high culture and probity, named Francis Daniel Pastorius. The headquarters of his agency were in Germantown, where his mild compatriots raised acres upon acres of flax, and spun it under their low, German-built gables. The settlers surrounded themselves with memo- rials of their former homes in the Old World, planted vineyards and made an abundance of beer, and connected their lives as easy-going settlers with their former existence by means of souvenirs and costly importations. Pastorius was a botanist and horticulturist. A New England poet, attracted by the moral and material beauty of the early Pennsylvania settlement, has painted the peaceful serenity of that Frankfort band in their Arcadian exile, "Where, forest-walled, the scattered hamlets lay Along the wedded rivers .... Through the deep Hush of the woods a murmur seemed to creep — The Schuylkill whispering in a voice of sleep; All else was still; the oxen from their ploughs Rested at last, and from their long day's browse Came the dun files of Krisheim's home-bound cows." Cresheim Creek is a wild rivulet whose name perpetuates the point of departure of some of these earliest emigrants from the Fatherland. The relics of Pastorius and his company are lost, except in his v.-ritings and the nomencla- ture of the district. It is not known where he was buried. The Wissahickon, which was the Baptistery and haunt of troops of German mystics, changed its solemn character. The active water of the stream was used to turn a chain of DEVIL b I'c.iDi,, .Mol 111 ul LKt-SlI I.I.M CKIilUC. 48 A CENTURY AFTER. mills which stretched, a few years ago, for miles back from its confluence with the Schuylkill. On a small affluent of the Wissahickon, a Hollander, Wilhelm Rlittinghausen, assisted by his sons, Claus and Gerhard, ran the first paper-mill built on the continent. This family, whose name became anglicized into Ritten- house, afterwards gave birth to the first and greatest of American astronomers. The use of Wissahickon as a milling stream continued until the establishment of Fairmount Park, when the old mills were successively removed, leaving the virgin waters as pure as they were before there was an America. Not far up the Wissahickon, from its mouth, is Greenwood dam, a sort of key to the ardst's position in taking sketches, since the views on every side make the most beaudful effects. It is a nook where in all directions are distributed the materials that a painter loves — the old bridge, the sluice escaping around an abandoned water-gate, the ridges of rocks tumbling up the hills in fantastic shapes, the precipices dark with clinging woods. The secluded spot where Cresheim Creek empties into the Wissahickon is sdll more impressive, and as different as possible from anything one expects in park scenery. It is like a gorge in the most tameless mountain-pass, and reminds the traveler of some of the capricious movements of the Saco near its head-waters. To attain its bed in the cradle of the Wissahickon, Cresheim leaps wildly down in a little cascade, and then expands into a black and whirling pool, enwreathed by thick ancestral trees, where it murmurs sullenly for awhile before escaping into the eager current of Wissahickon's rock-chilled waters. After any of the annual spring freshets, or in other seasons towards the twilight of the day, the black witches' cauldron of this diabolic pool is not to be forgotten by those who have approached it. A savage place — as lonely and enchanted As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted By woman wailing for her demon-lover ! It is the amazement of every visitor who is taken there. Though but a morning's walk from the city, this barbaric scene is a taste of the primitive wilderness in its rudest expression. A Park containing such a bit of Nature is already full-furnished, and hardly needs the hand of "improvement." The first settlers on these streams had but few callers from Philadelphia. A German-speaking race, at Germantown was their neighbor. They called their woods the Wilderness, and never in their wildest dreams imagined that visitors from the great city would penetrate their wild haunt as a mere matter of pleasure. JD'f •/T^' devil's pool, CRESIIKIM CREEK.— LOOKINCi DDWN. 50 ■ A CENTURY AFTER. The nook where Cresheim Creek hesitates and collects its faculties before making up its mind to plunge into Wissahickon is as secret a spot as can be found in the Park. It is not to be discovered without some perseverance and some pedestrianism, and practically is a safe spot for the lonely wanderer who wants to hug his solitude in the bosom of Nature. Ladies do not often come to the Devil's Pool. If any feminine explorers reach it, they are delicate city girls out of the villas of Germantown, bearing down upon it in a flutter of conquest and forced bravery, strong in numbers and amply provided with male defenders, surprising the rocks with a spread of skirts cut in the daintiest summer fashion, and bending over the black mirror of the Pool countenances that are ready to pale at the thought of their own courage. Beautiful enough in any part of its length, it is only at this enchanted basin that Cresheim becomes dramatic; a stream may be graceful and smooth and shady for miles together, but your picnic party or your pair of lovers will follow it without interest until it gathers itself up for a fall, or revolves upon itself in a maelstrom. It is when hesitating that a woman is most lovely, it is when coiled that the serpent exerts its fascination, and it is when dilated for a plunge into the larger stream that this shy rivulet becomes poetical. In the deep cauldron of the Pool is concentrated the essence of its career; it takes the water stolen from far-off country springs, the ripples of innocent rills blue with forget-me-nots, the freckled shadows of pebble-paved brooks that have never been troubled with darker guests than minnows and dragon- flies, and here in this black bowl it makes them all seem sombre. Under the shade of evergreen trees and within the hollow palms of the rocks it stirs up a cup of mystery and of sorcery, and the puzzled city visitors feel that, whatever it is all about, the fifth act of the play is somehow reached at this spot, and that the stream was not the same in its milkwarm rustic life in the open country, and will not be the same after the green curtain drops upon it at its emergence, where the dazzling sunlit flow of Wissahickon stretches before its cfiibouchure like a row of footlights. So the rare visitors — the cits and fashionable dames who have left their carriage at the little wooden bridge just below, or the genteel cottagers from Germantown and Chestnut Hill — feel rather strange and shy at the Devil's Pool, like auditors at a drama in some foreicrn lancjuaee, recollecting- that superstitious colonists in the infancy of the Province really did resort here for mystical observances; that rites of baptism have been murmured over the stream in strange German jargon, before the region was well known to settlers of our race; that the Hermits of the Ridge must have knelt often around the dark basin, and that the murmur now in their ears has formerly been the accompani- FAIRMOUNT PARK. SI ^ -'■^^^^S^ *^fe- Acadians, was separated from her lover, and passed her 5#'V- life in waitmg and seeking for him, and only found ^fW^ him dying in a hospital when both were old." Long- fellow wondered that this legend did not strike the fancy of Hawthorne, and said to him, " It you have really made up your mind not to use it for a story, will you give it to me for a poem ?" To this Hawthorne assented, and more- over promised not to treat the subject in prose till Longfellow _lj had seen what he could do with it in verse. Hawthorne rejoiced Sc: / in the great success of Longfel- low, and loved to count up the editions, both foreign and Ameri- can, of this now world-renowned poem. To the visitor at the quaint, almost hidden building, the form of the olive-skinned, gray, Norman woman must be plainer to the sight than the mere walls and furniture of the Retreat. FRANKLIN S GRAVE. Franklin's Grave is in the cemetery of Christ Church, at Fifth and Arch streets. Beside him lies his faithful Deborah, who in early life forgave him so much neglect and married him so trustingly, while in his maturity she made him so wise and notable a partner. Her letter describing the furnishing of the new house in Franklin Court, in which she addresses him so fondly as "(7 my child !" gives a perfect picture of this lady's practical and housewifely character. "Your FR A NK L/N'S GRA VE. 65 time-piece stands in one corner, which is, as I am told, 'all wrong.' In the north room where we sit we have a small Scotch carpet, the small book-case, brother John's picture, and one of the King and Queen. The room we call yours has in it a desk—the harmonica made like a desk ; * '•' * the pictures are not put up, as I do not like to drive nails. I have taken all the dead letters" — (the first postmaster's modest pile of dead letters,) "and had them boxed and barreled up." She concludes with the familiar expression of "my child," and exclaims, " there is a great odds between a man's being at home and abroad !" The gravestone is a flat slab, near the street, at which point an opening has been made in the wall for the convenience of spectators : the inscription is of the simplest kind, and only in books are to be seen the epigrammatic words which Franklin devised for himself, expressing his belief in immortality, and faith in his "Authour:" The body of BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, Printer, (like the cover of an old book, its contents torn, and stripped of its lettering and gilding) lies here food for worms. Yet the work itself shall not be lost, but will (as he be- lieved) appear once more in a new and more beautiful edition, corrected and amended by THE AUTHOUR. The statue of Franklin, by Lazzarini an Italian sculptor, the gift of Mr. Bingham, stands in a niche in the front of the Philadelphia Library, at the corner of Fifth and Library streets, and the edifice is often popularly called the Franklin Library. " When Franklin hears the State-House clock strike twelve, he always nods his head," proverb-loving old men say to their grandchildren. The Library Company of Philadelphia, whose collection of 101,000 books is sheltered in this old building, was founded in 1731. The kernel of the whole catalogue is the Loganian Library ; James Logan, the first Secretary of Pennsylvania, gave his collection of 2000 volumes to the city, and the "Loganian" books are still shown to all comers without restriction, according to the provisions of his will. The Philadelphia Library possesses a great many rare and curious works; a foretaste of its riches may be had from the central case in the first room, wherein 66 A CEN7 UR Y A F TER. a good many fi valuable manu- scripts are shown under glass. Curiosi- ties, relics, and mementos occu- py its somewhat ■d0^\ tlingy recesses, ;| and in its laby- rinthine alcoves and cloisters may be seen the poring students, consulting refer- ences, ferreting authorities, and tracingf out evidence with all the ardor of the book- worm. A valuable legacy, hampered with conditions, was made a short time ago to the library by Dr. Rush: the executors of his will are erecting, by his order, a splendid library edifice on South Broad street, to be proffered to the Library Company when completed. Acceptance of the gift will, accordingly, mean a removal from the time-honored site opposite Independence Square. THE RESORTS OF PH I LAD ELPH I ANS. ATLANTIC CITY. A -SUMMER suburb of Philadelphia, where the ocean provides all the business and entertainment, is Atlantic City, — a timber capital laid out on the sea- beach at the nearest convenient point across the peninsula of New Jersey. The metropolis of Penn claims, indeed, to be a port city, using in that sense the mile- wide channel and broader bay of the Delaware ; but the Commonwealth has no actual sea-front, and to reach the Atlantic the inhabitants must borrow for a bridge the whole span of the adjacent State. The transit hardly occupies two hours. Citizens regard the ocean as their "countrj^-place," leasing or building cottaofes along- the beach, and visitinor their families there daily in the hot term, with no more interruption to business than would occur if their villas were fixed in some eligible spot in the rural interior. There are pleasant Woodruff parlor- cars attached to the expresses, and the merchant has hardly time to satisfy himself that there is nothing in the evening paper, when he is bowled smoothly to the immediate vicinity of his summer cottage. The streets of pretty buildings which form a wooden chess-board beside the sea are fresh and coquettish. The town is but twenty years old; and, besides, the sandy soil and absence of rock-foundation preclude the attempt at ponderous stone villas. It is to a seriously-built city what a lady's July muslins are to her more deliberate and awe-inspiring toilets of the winter. The jaunty little town is bright with every pearly tint that a painter can extract from his paint-pot; it is trimmed around the balconies with fantastic frills of scroll-sawing, or jutting timbers carved like a Russian peasant's roof-tree, or sham-Gothic capitals that perk themselves up in a propitiatory way and ask, "Wouldn't you take me for real stone if I were sanded ?" It is roofed with shingles, cut and stained to look like slate, with saucy mansards, little towers that would be taken for chimneys, and fanciful pignons just able to support their weather-vanes. Every house in Atlantic City is some man's castle, doubtless; but some of the castles would not stand a very long siege. These fretwork strongholds vary in size ; some are .so small that you are tempted to put them on the centre-table, like the carved cottages from Switzerland ; while others, the public-houses, are so big that with their balconies stripped off )ou would declare they were factories. The hotels, indeed, are rather gigantic; but they run into length, not Iieight, and look 68 A CENTURY AFTER. PACIFIC AVENUE. like ordinal"}' tall buildings that had been advised to lie down on their sides and grow; even so did the giant Gargantua, "as quickly as he had banqueted, stretch himself out on a good bench and go to sleep, without evil thinking or evil speaking." The United States, the Sea-View House, and Schaufler' s are repre- sentative hotels, devoted respectively to the fashionable, the democratic, and the Teutonic elements of our civilization. Besides these large representative inns there are a dozen prominent hotels of more or less importance, and about a hundred boarding-houses, an abundance of houses for temporary hire, and, added to these mercenary accommodations, the dignified privacy of rich men's homes. Such varied buildings, with the churches, compose the town. The element that is missed, and whose absence leaves visible the agreeable picture of a city entirely given up to pleasure, is the work-day element. The sea-side city differs from the commercial city in having no gloomy warehouses, no storage-houses devoted to trade, no soiled pavements vexed with thundering drays, no hot factories giddy with steam and belted wheels, no counting-houses peopled with big books and pale clerks — in short, none of the curse laid on fallen Adam. The wharf of this town is not crowded with heav)' merchandise, but strewn with sand, tracked with pleasure-carriages, and trodden by people intent on idleness alone. It is pleasant ATLANTIC CJTY. 69 to see occasionally a happy village devoted to nothing but recreation. Every house in the place assists in the impression, joins the conspiracy, puts on its liveliest paint and prettiest ornaments, and pretends at least to be comfortable and cheerful. The dried white sand blows up from the beach, banks itself in some of the porticoes like snow, spreads over the pavements, and runs races in the wind under your feet; the corner curb-stone is hidden under a pile of it to-day, to be blown clean to-morrow. A curled ribbon of sea-weed is wrapped around the front pillar like the sea-weed that clings to the palaces of Venice. In a town which the ocean constantly dresses out with its sands and shells and foliagre it seems as if " o the precautions of common civic life were a joke. The policemen in uniform who pace these marine streets and guard the doors, hardly appear as if they expected to be taken seriously ; the street-cars, rolling on tracks gritty with sand that lately paved the ocean, seem like a pretense ; the rows of street-lamps that twinkle at night might be expected to fade suddenly, like a mirage. But the police and cars and lights go on with their business as gravely as in "real" cities. The beach is laid with a footway of heavy plank, on which the promenading, and most of the flirting, is done. Every afternoon, for two miles, it is thickly peopled with citizens on dress-parade. The usual Chestnut street promenade of Philadelphia has long been famous as one of the most beautiful sights of that big brick Babylon. The Philadelphia girl, say the natives, with every appearance of belief, is not only the fairest of the continent, but she knows how to walk with ease, self-possession, and simplicity, without consciousness of notice, and without efforts to attract it. The Philadelphia male, say the same disinterested critics, is the only citizen of the Northern States who can walk the street as if the pavement did not burn his feet, and who does not seem rushino- to some business encrasfement with the speed of despair. These citizens, it is claimed, besides their good looks, have the art of lounging gracefully, and pacing as if they could afford to do it. Not- withstanding the great increase in the number of equipages of late years — since the possession of a suitable driving-ground has made the ownership of carriages almost indispensable — the Philadelphians are a city of walkers; the prosperous people still turn out, and show ihcir more contented faces among the crowds that fill the pavements; the promenade is not, as elsewhere, merely a concourse of business men making parade of their misery, or of women care-worn, shopping, hardened, tired, or painted. It is a procession that includes the "best persons." It is what Paris would recognize as one of her own boulevards of Jldtieurs. 7° A CENTURY AFTER. Now the pretty wooden boulevard at Atlantic City shows the same procession, almost as identical as if just poured upon it from the original decanter. It is an extension of Chestnut street. The reader has only to look out for a recognition of the same fair faces, with the em- bellishment of greater happiness and more studied idleness, and with the last traces of aj care quite smoothed D 2 away. z To the delights of S: bathine are added the sports of crab-fishing at the "Thoroughfare," near the railroad bridge, and of sailing and fishing in the boats kept for hire at the "Inlet," which crosses the beach beside the light-house: these diversions give rise to incessant jokes, a little sea-sickness, and endless adventures. The reader probably knows the routine at an American bathing- city, from the average of which this does not par- ATLANTIC CITY. 71 ticularly differ. About mid-morning, with certain variations for the tide, the sojourners prepare to bathe. Little toilet-houses stud the beach, the hotels possessing long lines of them, and the private residences having individual boxes of their own in particular points on the nearest spot opposite their street. In one of these wardrobe-cases Brother Jonathan struggles into his flannel suit, and emerges when in full rig, feeling like a circus-performer in his novel uniform; he meets by appointment his favored maid, or his daughter or wife, who is hardly recognizable with her Bloomer suit of braided cloth, but who still tries to look jaunty, in her ruffled and belted frock, while a scared-looking chip hat conceals her hair, and moccasins, small as if made for an Indian baby, her feet. Brother Jonathan chooses for his partner the place adapted to her wishes, holds her hands firmly as the billow rolls over them, and assists her to regain her footing, making- it a matter of pride not to lose his own. When the sea determines to play off its tricks, and sends some tenth or eleventh billow more powerful than the rest, it is his business to recover his balance first, fish around boldly in the water for his wrecked companion, ingeniously recognize her by some emerging ribbon or shoe, or other lifted signal of distress, and swim oft to any reasonable distance for her hat. Having tucked up her hair for her, hung her over his arm a minute to let the salt water run out from her mouth, and planted her on her feet, with a polite assurance that she looks fresher from her dip and that drowning is becoming to her, he assists her to further immersions, or teaches her to float and to swim. The bath over, he retires to his wardrobe-room again, where he goes through struggles like those of a confined Medium to force his damp person into his clothes once more. Then, rejoining his rosy mate, he waits on her to the hotel, confers a sandwich upon her, and leaves her till the next meeting, at dinner-time, or at the evening hop. The frequenters of Atlantic City are inveterate bathers. The ocean is not a mere excuse or pretense; they seek it to make its most intimate acquaintance. Almost everybody repairs to the water at about eleven o'clock. Many of the gentlemen have already tested the billows, in the privileged swimming-bath, without the inconvenience of flannel, at sunrise. Another large party bathe in the afternoon; in the evening, amid all the stir of fashion on the beach, amid the promenading and fine toilets and stj'lish driving, the sea still receives its bathers with decorum and gentleness, lifting its waves high around them in a privacy of foam. For every taste and every guest, the salt tub is ready, receiving countless relays of incumbents with the same refreshing welcome. 72 A CENTURY AFTER. The air of Atlantic City has been compared with that of Nice. There is nothing perceptibly acrid or sharp or saline about it; it is but rarely laden with fog. The action of the sun upon such a breadth of flat country as here leads up to the beach produces an equalizing and temperate effect, absorbing the moisture as quickly as it rises, and resulting in a rich, dry climate like that of favored regions far inland. For this reason this resort is known far and wide as the dry sea-side par excelletice, and is unhesitatingly recommended by the doctors to invalids who may even be suffering from bronchial complaints. The finest sight of Atlantic City, morally speaking, is not her grandest hotel or most elegant equipage — not the tower of her beacon, the regularity of her ten-mile beach, or even the majesty of her ocean. It is the charity of her Nursery for the children of the poor. This establishment was the first of its kind in the country, and was due to the healthful imagination of certain wealthy gentlemen of Philadelphia (or, shall we conjecture, of their wives?) who fancied that a sight of the Atlantic and the sports of the shore would be a good regimen for the invalid offspring of the indigent. The charity was opened with the best results. Here all summer long, to the number of fifty or sixty at a time, the little sick urchins from the poor man's home are brought to breathe the pure air and enjoy the limitless space, and to play fearlessly with the monstrous ocean. Hundreds of frail little lives are probably saved by this means every summer, and the good example of a sea-side children's home is being imitated, only too tardily, at other resorts. CHILDREN S HOME. CAPE MAY. FROM time immemorial the citizens of Philadelphia have made their bathing- place of the Atlantic near the mouth of the Delaware River, — resorting to Cape May as the wealthy Romans used to resort to Balse and Capri. To reach the spot they were at first obliged to overcome all the inconveniences of bad roads and primitive boating facilities, until the invention of Robert Fulton and Oliver Evans gave them the power of reaching the spot with the speed of steam. In about three hours by locomotive, or in nine hours by steamer, they can now follow the axis-line of the long State of New Jersey, and arrive without fatigue at its southern extremity. Here the powerful surf of the Atlantic rolls upon the extremity of the peninsula, or drives tlie fresh water before it up the broad channel of Delaware Bay. ., The curious feature of the litde city of Cape l\Iay is that it combines the fashionable watering-place with the rude provincial settlement. From the early part of the present century it commenced to grow, as an humble aggregation of rustic houses and marine shops, where the fishermen and harvesters of the neighboring inlets might come to sell their produce, visit the doctor, or leave their sunburnt children at the school, or gather for worship in the low-roofed church. The primitive buildings of this state of civilization still remain, covering a large flat area that stretches back from the sea, and sheltering a permanent village population of fifteen hundred souls ; but this rude maritime settlement is now everywhere overshadowed and pierced by gorgeous modern structures, that lift their ornamental fronts among the weather-stained walls, and make a 74 A CEXTURY AFTER. contrast like "cloth of gold matched with cloth of frieze." The ambitious hotels have usurped the whole sea-front. The street-corners are occupied by fanciful shops for the sale of stj'lish trifles. Splendid equipages with liveried drivers dash between the rude antique houses. Modern villas of fanciful device are steadily pushing down the boatmen's cottages and the humble country stores. All through the winter and spring this aristocratic element is fast asleep. The monstrous hotels are as lifeless as the temples of Palmyra, — their carpets are stripped from the floors and hung, to prevent moulding, in festoons over the stair-railings; in the centre of the parlor floors, where the figures of the dance are wont to be woven, are mountains of chairs; vast heaps of crockery are built upon tables in the dining-halls, and the pantries are piled with transparent structures of chandelier-globes, goblets, fruit-dishes in dozens, and salt-cellars in hundreds. Only the steps of a solitary watchman echo from time to time through the corridors, to prove that the lethargy is only sleep, not death. At the same time the private cottages stretch along the streets in long, inanimate rows, like the backbones of extinct monsters stranded by the sea, and emptied of the nerve and marrow that gave them purpose and energy in the battle of life. During these months the original and natural life of Cape May creeps timidly into notice. The rustic shops are visited by half-idle farmers, buying saddles, ax-handles, bags, or stoneware for the toiling wives at home. The village respectables come out and exchange modest visits, — the schoolmaster and his wife calling upon Mr. and Mrs. Editor, the boat-builder and carpenter discussing the price of timber, and the clergyman receiving timid calls from the old maids and widows of the place. As spring opens, a new wave of animation steals over the village, prophetic of the great change that the warm weather is to bring. Truck gardens are manured with sea-weed and crushed crab-shells. The eggs of the horseshoe crab are collected in great quantities to feed whole aviaries of " spring chickens," — accounting for the strange, sea-like flavor that city guests will presently notice and wonder at in those India-rubbery fowls. As June progresses, the farmers in the vicinity paint their boats, the fishermen grease their wagons — for in this amphibious region the yeomen are sailors, the sailors yeomen, and the distinction between sea-faring and land-culture is merged in a pleasant confusion. Old nags — their coats as furry and salty as those of Neptune's sea-horses — are clipped, curried, and made presentable; the father mends up the old harness with home-learnt skill, and rubs with oil the cracking cover of the dearborn; the son buys a box of paper collars; the gingham-gowned daughter pays additional visits to the barnyard, feeds the hens with a novel CAFE MAY. prodigality that as- tonislies those mild pensioners, and, like the immemorial girl of the fable, counts by scores and hun- dreds of dozens the fortune-brincrinor eggs that are not hatched, and may never be. If the summer's business turns out well, the girl will come out with money for sev- eral new dresses, and the boy, after driving city belles ^ all July and August, ^ will be ready to > marry a countr)- one * in September. With the advan- cing season come certain sis^ns that in- dicate to the citizen that July is at hand. The amphibious farmer of Cape May begins to prepare for his crops. His harvest is the rich citizen. "John," he says to his son, "drop the oysters in brack- ish water in the inlet yonder, and take A CENTURY AFTER. COLUMBIA AVENUE. care you let them fall hinge down. Give them as much water to drink as they see fit." That is the easy way in which the Cape May caterer feeds his bivalves for the inevitable oyster-stew of supper-time. A lean oyster, dropped properly into the liquid mud of the channels, where the soft water overflows him, will become firm and fat in a single night. "Ben and Tom," continues the purveyor, "you must put the wheels on to the old wagon, and prepare to scoop me up a couple of bushels of soft crabs every day while the season lasts." At the same time, the old man knows that he has a sure and liberal market secured for all the fine hay he has reaped from the salt meadow, for the Indian corn and tomatoes he has planted in his garden-patch, for the yield of the potato-acre, and for the calves and pigs whose infant graces are ripening behind the barn. Thus, when the season fairly arrives, every member of the farmer's family is thrown out, like a tentacle, to suck in wealth and gain ; ever)^ article of value in his possession is utilized, his goods are hired, his industry is directed to the same end, and the city man who employs the rough, freckled countryman to drive him for his pleasure, hardly feels the truth, that this homely rustic may be prepared, with the result of his accumulated savings, to buy him out ten times over. At the hotels, for a month before the earliest and hardiest city visitor appears, there are carpenters hammering, painters hanging like spiders from the eaves of CAPE MA Y. 77 lofty hotels, upholsterers stretching carpets, plumbers and gas-fitters darkly burying miles of pipe inside of solid walls. Then, on the eve of the opening-day, regiments of exiled and melancholy cooks come down by the train, with their white caps folded up inside their French chests ; whole choruses of negro waiters arrive, chattering and whistling ; silent, stout men wander into the village with little caskets containing violins or oboes. Finally, the dazzling hotel clerk assumes his sweet smile and fixes himself like a jewel at the desk, and the season is opened. Cape May is inferior to Newport in the solidity of its buildings, but, with that exception, is, perhaps, the most substantial looking of our sea-side resorts. The finest hotels are more solid and ornamental, for example, than the finest of Long Branch. The Stockton House and Congress Hall are summer palaces that easily vie with the most splendid at Saratoga. Besides these, there are the Columbia, Atlantic, Sea-Breeze, United States, and Ocean Houses — each of them the favorite with certain classes and families, who loudly cry up their chosen resting-places. During the months of July and August the town literally becomes a Philadelphia-on-the-Sea ; the visitors are old Philadelphia neighbors, who greet each other as they drive on the beach as they have habitually greeted each other in driving through Fairmount Park. The hotel parlors are filled with old acquaintances, glad to meet again after brief separation. The balls and "Germans" of the winter months are imitated in the "hops," and largely patronized by the same class of people. And beside the tender encounters and formal recognition of the ball-room floor, there is the immense common-room of the ocean, where beaus and belles, in marine costumes, meet without the possibility of formality or haughtiness. The bathing at Cape May is so perfect, that visitors habituated to it are apt to look with contempt upon any other beach they may try. The surf is mathematically regular, and just high enough for pleasure. A good bather can take the outermost and loftiest roller, while the more timid can arrange themselves along the graduated waves that fall in towards the shore in musical diminuendo. The even sand-beach stretches for an indefinite distance out under water, with a safe and accurate slope, over which the advancing tide is scored into breakers with the regularity of clock-work. There is a broad and smooth pavement of sand left by the retreating surf, on which promenaders may walk with comfort and luxury, while carriages can bowl smoothly upon it as on an idealized Macadam, or equestrians may pace with the spent waves washing over their horses' feet. This superb natural road extends from Poverty Beach, a 78 A CENTURY AFTER. desolate part of the coast eastward from Cape May, about ten miles to Diamond Beach, a locality reached after rounding the southern point of New Jersey and passing- up along the side of Delaware Bay. The latter beach is named from the abundance of pebbles forming the shore, many specimens of which, being of rock-crystal, may be polished into the semblance of precious stones. The regular life of Cape May — we speak now of the habitual existence of old habitues, not of the visits of the fashionable moths who flutter down for a day or two — is a delicious, lazy round of exercise and pleasure, calculated to tone the nerves and brace the system for winter work. Breakfasting about eight, the guests devote the after-breakfast hour to reading the morning papers, discussing the news and their matutinal cigar, demolishing ten-pins in the alleys, and thinking about the crisp bath that is to come. About ii A. M. the rows of uniform wooden cabins that strew the beach in front of the principal hotels, and the more commodious ones erected by private cottagers, begin to give birth to a tribe of strangely-dressed creatures, who meet and advance to the water hand in hand ; these are the ladies and o-entlemen whose fine skirts and fanciful canes have lashed the porticoes of the hotels in the earlier part of the morning. Now, covered with gypsy hats and flannel suits, they look like mad people from an asylum. When refreshed by the bath, they emerge, dress, lunch, and lose themselves in a delicious nap until dinner-time — the men being usually guilty of another cigar at this period, whose smoke melts languidly off into the dreams of their siesta — the ladies spreading the pillows with their hair, which dries as they sleep, themselves looking the while like mermaids strewing their tresses over rocks of marble. Dinner is taken at an hour early enough to permit a drive in the pleasant late part of the afternoon. At five the approaches to the hotels are thick with the carriages, either brought to order or hopeful of an engagement. About sunset the roads are covered with the world of Cape May, whirling in all directions to enjoy the prospect and the afternoon sea-breeze. The beach is dressed for a great distance with a firmly-bedded artificial road, forming a fine boulevard, upon which the splendid equipages can display themselves to the best possible advantage. Back in the country the roads have of late years been much improved and laid out anew in various directions, forming agreeable drives through a peculiar and impressive, though flat and wild, country. The best material at hand for dressing these roads is the oyster-shell, which is laid by many a ton upon the level turnpikes around Cape May. The New Jersey farmer believes in nothing but what he calls a "good, old-fashioned, shell road," packed with the hard envelopes of oysters that are killed in cold blood. ACADEMY OF MUSIC. ENTRANXE TO ACADEMY. <'TT is such a luxur)'," said Ronconi the opera- singer, " to throw out the voice in the Philadel- ^P phia Academy!" This fine building, this- triumph of acoustic accommodations, is situated at Broad and Locust streets, and the grand ball which marked its opening took place in 1857. It is of dark brick and stone, in the Italianized Byzantine st)'le, so common for all our large edifices that are not churches ; the architects were Le Brun and Runge. Besides its delicious nursing quality for the voice, this is in advance of most opera-houses in the world for interior beauty and dimensions. The stage, framed with twin pairs of enormous and graceful Corinthian pillars, upon which Bailly's colossal c&ry- atides support the arches, is singularly effective : as a stage, again, it is uncommonly commodious, distancing nearly all the theatrical stages of Europe in 79 8o A CENTURY AFTER. dimensions. The auditorium, ninety feet wide, is one hundred and two and a half feet deep; that of La Scala in Milan, and that of San Carlo in Naples alone are somewhat larger. The allegorical paintings on the ceiling by Schmolze are real works of art. It seats twenty-nine hundred persons, the average of European theatres only containing places for two thousand. The musical taste of Philadelphia is a rather singular union of profundity and naivete. Observers at a distance, — especially professional observers, — not holding the clew, have often wondered at the fact that certain famous vocalists have appeared there with the most delirious success, drawing the quiet inhabitants out of their houses in hordes, while others equally famous, or very nearly so, have sung to empty benches, and presently have had to pack up their stage-wardrobes and decamp in fury and despair. The peculiarity is not an unwholesome one, and depends on the condition of public and private criticism in the cit}^ The press critics are in several instances persons of the highest competence, enthusiastic lovers of the art, and, as auditors, fastidious and instructed in a high degree. The towns-people include many connoisseurs similarly "advanced" and educated. There is in both departments the greatest intelligence of independent judgment, with the least imaginable tendency to clannishness. All this leads to a state of things that is the despair of the impressario. The population is a fixed one — not a changing collection of visitors indulgent towards any novelty. The situation is quite different from that at London, or Paris, or Berlin, or Munich, or Milan. In any great city of fluctuating population the maintenance of musical recreation is a constant and recognized necessity; the professional critics of such capitals always acquire a particular tone of urbanity and catholicity — a tolerance not necessarily venal, but extremely broad. The star performers visit such places in turn, and are received by the press, if they have any sort of desert, with an easy and rather cynical approbation, which is certain to be seconded by the support of some fraction of the changing population. In this way respectable mediocrity has the chance of a very fair temporary success. But let respectable mediocrity set her face before the audience composed of resident amateurs, and in the glare of a press filled with virtuosos, — she had better set it in the jaws of a lion. A chilling disdain, worse than a storm of hisses, emanates from the crowd in the auditorium, who let the initial test-performance drag itself through in freezing decorum, and studiously absent themselves thereafter. Why should people leave such comfortable homes as those of Philadelphia for any performer that is not an absolute star? The audiences here are, at first view, the representative or ideal audiences, whom the blandishments of inflated incompetency connot beguile, and ACADEMY OF M US I C. VESTIBULE OF THE ACADEMY. whose judgment is re-enforced by die opinion of cultured cridcs in the daily papers. But a litde consideration will show that this very independence of opinion is perilous to the business success of the art, and that without business success no art can stand in this world. Your newspaper cridc, if he happens to be a virtuoso, with his own piano-pardes in full blast through the winter, is liable to lack in catholicity as much as he is able to furnish in knowledge; this sort of critic has his uncontrollable hatred of Bellini, or his fond recollections of Sphor, or his private adoradon of Wagner. His public criticisms art; fashioned upon some 82 • A CENTURY AFTER. special theory of what is excellent in art, rather than upon the standards that an indulgent world has determined to accept. Printed criticism of this sort is sure to display the most startling incongruities. The "free lance" is found rushing forward to attack, on the sudden, some performer with a world-wide fame, or unexpectedly rising to champion a third-rate artist who does not show the faults of its own particular dislike. Thus the support of musical art is rather capricious, just because it is not ignorant. It is not to be relied on for charity towards a rising talent, and it is almost as contemptuous as the red Indians towards declining age. Tamberlik, Mario, have had bitter hours in Philadelphia; and when it came to such faded voices as those of Schillag and Di Murska, the opposition was merciless and final. At the same time, a public of this sort will have its own favorites, whom it will support long after their power to excel is really gone, simply because it has marked and approved them in earlier days. Nothing can match the fidelity of an audience composed forever of the same virtuosos: when it has stamped a favorite, it abides by that favorite till death. Thus Brignoli, loved when his tenor was fresh and strong, might bring his rusty throat here to-morrow with the certainty of support. He belongs, in the minds of the Philadelphians, to the famous day when the Academy was new, and they discovered that they were an opera- supporting community. The opening of the grand opera-house was made brilliant by the glorious tones of Gazzaniga, who eighteen years ago was a novelty in this country, and whose admirable method, still effective in teaching, was then supported by the charms of beauty and liveliness. Artists painted her as the Traviata, and her bust still decorates the halls of the grateful Academy she opened. It was a pleasant season, the first at the gigantic opera-house. The building was not only big, but abundantly decorated and furnished; there was nothing barn-like in its huge dimensions; the upholstery and walls, of a judicious shade of crimson, relieved the white-and-gold rainbows of the successive tiers. The vast opening of the stage, with its noble frame of doubled pillars and caryatid figures, was filled in with a crimson "first drop," so illusively painted with velvet festoons by J. R. Martin, of Berlin, that the curtain of Xeuxis could hardly have been more deceptive. When this rolled up, the unparalleled dimensions of the stage were found full of the richest scenery and furniture, amongst which the thread of the dramatic story and the embroideries of the music were gradually developed. The audience, on the other side of the footlights, was brilliant and proud — a complication, in fact, of social "circles," each circle knowing intimately its own "set," but ignorant as the grave of the people in the circle just outside of it. ACADEMY O !■■ MUSIC. FOYER OF THE ACAIJEMY. The first six orchestra rows, according to the terms of the subscriptions, were occupied by the stockholders; the purchase of stock giving a lasting right to the occupancy of one of these favored seats. It was a splendid privilege, and held very cheap at the money, that of being allowed to sit in one of these marked fauteuils, under the eyes of the whole house, and in full blaze of the sun-like chandelier. Every man of means was eager to become the owner of stock, and by this easy method proclaim himself, in the most obvious manner, as a member of the republican aristocracy. It was not so great a joy, however, to the managers, who rebelled not a litde at having to give up the best seats in the house to a throng of well-dressed persons who added nothing to the receipts of the performance, and simply reposed on their right of pre-emption. 84 A CENTURY AFTER. The whole plan of the building met with general approval. The lofty and handsome foyer, the broad staircases, furnishing such abundant means of exit, the corridors for circulation outside the tiers, all were naturally admired, and have not yet been matched on this continent. The edifice is as large as the limitations of acoustics will permit, and is unexcelled for the virtue of gathering up the sounds emitted from the stage and delivering them in perfection to the hearers. The latter are served by every convenience. There can be no better house for getting about in, or for getting out of Even the amphitheatre is accessible and pleasant, and in the family circle below, a certain set of artists have formed the habit of eoinsf with their wives and children, creatine a little social salon in that less aristocratic retreat, and carrying thither some of the best-educated ears and most cultivated musical memories to be found anywhere. The history of the Academy has not been uneventful. Citizens remember the enormous crowd which filled the buildinof on the occasion of the Prince of Wales visiting this country, when, in addition to the rush for good places, a number of influential dandies got upon the stage as supernumeraries ; the ladies in their stalls, and Patti, and perhaps Royal Highness itself, were then not a little amazed at the sight of enormous opera-glasses, carried down to the footlights in the hands of the stage soldier, and very coolly directed into the boxes from that advantageous position. The poor "captain of supernumeraries" got a terrible blowing-up ; but the offending individuals had argued that, if a cat may look at a king, a puppy may look at a prince, and departed very well contented with themselves. Italian opera has flourished on this stage whenever it was well presented, and the performers capable ; mediocre exhibitions have been a little too severely punished. At this Academy, as has been intimated, it is either a rousing success or a flat failure, and a comfortable, good-natured support of second-class merit is almost unknown. German opera has been well sustained, since the pleasant time when Bertha Johansen showed the towns-people her fine interpretation of Fidelia: the opera of that name had a great run, with performance of all the various overtures. Mme. Rotter, who made such a graceful soubrette in Fidelia, made a good soubrette too in the pre77ziere part in Fra Diavolo, where her jolly and innocent style was highly appreciated. In this opera Herr Habelmann, then young and handsome, rolled over the rocks so conscientiously as the dying brigand, that he broke an arm ; the pile of rock-work, owing to the exceptional height of the stage, yielding him a fall of greater altitude than ever tenor had on the boards of a theatre before. ACADEMY OF MUSIC. ACADEMY OF MUSIC — INTERIOR. Adalina Patti, now too long a stranger to the American boards, has frequently sung in the Academy; the operas in which she is best remembered being those invariable selections of young beginners, the "Sonnambula" and "Lucia." Her career began in this city, where her first efforts, as infant phenomenon and child- violinist, are curiously recollected by play-goers. Her sister, Carlotta, has often filled the great dome with her superb singing in " The Magic Flute." One of 86 A CENTURY- AFTER. the most creditable feats of this institution, and one justifying its claim to be called an Academy, was its production of "Notre Uame," the opera written by Mr. Fry, a Philadelphian, and the principal composer America has yet produced. The opera, however, fell flat, though an excellent representation of Oiiasimodo was given by Mr. Seguin, and a fine combination of scenery and spectacular effect covered the stage ; the lack of a competent prima-donna — an old want whenever English opera has been concerned — was fatal to the success of the work. The history of the stage in this cit)' of the Quakers is more brilliant than might be expected. Notwithstanding the most determined opposition, a dramatic show was opened by Kean and Murray, in 1 749, forty-three years before the Puritans of Boston made up their reluctant minds to permit the exhibition of rope- dancing "as a moral lecture," in 1792. Nicholas Rowe was the first dramatic author regularly represented in Philadelphia by a full company. "The Fair Penitent" was played by a set of actors from England, under Lewis Hallam, in the large room over William Plumstead's storehouse, on the east side of Water street, at the corner of the first alley below Pine. The first actual theatre was built in 1759, on Society Hill, at the south-west corner of South and Vernon streets. David Douglass and his wife. Miss Cheer and Miss Morris displayed the unaccustomed spectacle of towering wigs, glass jewelry and red heels to the innocent city bloods, whose most daring costumes till then were guiltless of false pretense and tinsel. The next year, 1760, Douglass built and equipped his long- famous "South Street Theatre," a structure Avhich lasted until 1800. This was the scene of the Capuan revels of Howe and his army when they occupied the American capital during the revolutionary war. The officers opened the theatre with a theatrical company under their jDatronage, the more talented among them displaying with pride their own skill in acting or in decorating the stage. Here poor young Andre fluttered away the last months of his promising but vain life, devising pageants, leading the revels, and lending his artistic talent with brilliant effect to the production of the plays. The Major, together with a Captain Delancy, were the chief scene-painters of the British play-house during the brief irony of its splendor. A drop-curtain painted by Major Andre continued to be used habitually, for )-ears after the theatre had turned national again — as long, in fact, as the house stood. In 1792 occurred a split between the members of a large and conspicuous dramatic company, whose appearances were made sometimes in Philadelphia and sometimes in New York. A capable tragedian, Thomas Wignell, with Mr. and ACADEMY OF MUSIC. ACADL.M\ UK .MLSIC— EXTERKIK. Mrs. Morris, seceded, and set up his own company, the attraction being Mrs. Morris, a tall beauty on very high heels, whose charm was in her looks rather than in her art. Of this company Mr. Dunlap, the historian of the stage, says, that it flourished for many years, more uniformly, and with actors of higher estimation, than the rival company of New York, conducted by John Henr)^ A determined opposition to the drama was still maintained in the post- Revolutionary period on the part of a goodly number of excellent people, who regarded theatre-going as a form of amusement especially demoralizing to the young, and who consequently discountenanced it, even to the extent of asking legislative interference with the players. Within a decade of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, an animated debate on the subject of suppressing the theatres took place in the Legislature of Pennsylvania, and the law-makers of the adolescent State argued, according to their enlightenments and predilections, with all the fer\'or that legislative orators are accustomed to assume when they only about half understand the theme they are discussing; for it is fair to presume that many of them had never seen a theatrical performance, and but few sufficiendy often to form very intelligent ideas as to the moral or immoral 88 A CENTURY AFTER. influence of the drama. As a fine art, however, the drama found able and eloquent champions in such men as General Anthony Wayne and Robert Morris, and the sturdy common sense with which they backed their argument carried the day in favor of the theatres. The opening of the Chestnut Street Theatre in February, 1794, was an important event in the theatrical annals of Philadelphia. For more than three- score years this handsome house was the chief home of the drama in the City of Penn. It was forced to succumb some twenty odd years ago to the march of improvement, and a newer, sprucer, and more ornate house, half a mile distant, now bears its name. The original Chestnut Street Theatre was the "Old Drury" of Philadelphia, and its classic and imposing frontage, Avith its row of columns flanked by not undignified statues of Tragedy and Comedy, promised well for the character of the dramatic fare provided within its walls. The Chestnut was strong in its stock companies, and old play-goers have fond recollections of some of the combinations of great actors and actresses that have appeared there in times gone by. The reputation of the old Chestnut as a stock theatre has, in a degree, been inherited by the Arch Street Theatre, in Arch street above Sixth, which under a succession of managers has maintained itself in the favor of the public by the strength of its companies. The Walnut Street Theatre, at Ninth and Walnut streets, has been for a very long term of years the "star" house of Philadelphia. This theatre may be considered as the home of Tragedy, just as the muse of Comedy has shown a preference for the Arch, and its boards have been trodden by all the great dramatic performers who have appeared before Philadelphia audiences since its erection. It was at this theatre that Rachel gave her last performance in America, and it is said that the severe cold which she caught through the chilling draughts of the stage was the incipient cause of her last and fatal illness. The character personated by the great French tragedienne on this occasion was "Camille," in "Les Horaces." Before the erection of the Academy of Music, wandering operatic and concert troupes were accustomed to appear from time to time at the Walnut, so that the house may be said to have a musical as well as a dramatic history. Dramatic performances of various kinds are given at the Academy of Music nearly every season, as well as at the regular theatres. It is customary for stars, who, for various reasons, are unable to effect engagements at the smaller houses, to solicit the patronage and applause of the public at the Academy. Not to mention the great English-speaking artists who have from time to time appeared there, it is sufficient for our present purpose to allude to the fact that it was ACADEMY OF MUSIC. 89 at the Academy that Ristori, Janauschek, Seebach, and Salvini, first revealed to Philadelphia audiences the extent of their genius, and demonstrated the truthfulness of the reports of their greatness which had preceded them across the Atlantic. The Academy, however, notwithstanding its unsurpassed acoustic properties, which permit the slightest stage whisper to be distinctly heard in the remotest part of the auditorium, is not particularly well suited for dramatic performances, on account of its immense size, — actors as well as audience havino- a preference for a house where they can be close enough to each other to o-et upon reasonably familiar terms. If the Academy, however, is too laro-e for general theatrical purposes, Its Immense stage and Its valuable stock of scenery offer many facilities for the production of spectacular plays, and a number of these glittering pieces have been successfully brought out there. Apart from its dramatic and musical uses, the Academy is in extensive demand as a public hall — for such purposes, to mention a pleasant incident, as the International Tea Party given there not long ago under the auspices of the Ladies' Centennial Committee. Ball committees can find no place In the city so well adapted to their purposes — the grand ball to the Grand Duke Alexis of Russia, was given there; and popular lecturers, who are sure of attractino- laro-e audiences, prefer It to halls less Imposing in dimensions and less Impressive In appearance. This preference is not to be wondered at, for, independendy of the fact that the Academy will seat comfortably a larger audience than any other house in Philadelphia, an orator can make himself heard with so much ease and with so little strain to the voice that he is certain of being able to appear to the best advantage. The great size of this building makes it a favorite place for the holding of public gatherings of all kinds, from a mass-meeting to protest against some popular grievance, to a convention for nominating a President of the United States. It was in the Academy of Music that the convention which nominated Grant for a second term assembled and transacted the important (.luties devolving upon It. BROAD STREET. WHEN William Penn laid out his city he divided it, east and west and north and south, by broad avenues, which he intended should be its principal thoroughfares. High or Market street, as it is now called, which runs east and west, as the city grew was occupied by merchants, who reo-arded not the dictates of fashion, and fashionable people in disdain forsook its pavement and selected Chestnut street for their promenade. Broad street, which runs north and south, and which is the longest street in the world, for a less accountable reason was also neglected by fashion, and until within a comparatively few years past the chief buildings on it were VW:^';''r"'^'''' ■ F '-^^^T'-*f'^ if'^'li^UH factories and warehouses of various kinds. A few fine residences having been erected upon the upper portion of '■j'^, ^95? 2^.'.^/v-.3> .-t- mNA(.i)G1'E AXn l;l