Anti-slavery bugle. [volume] (New-Lisbon, Ohio) 1845-1861, 1856-08-02
From the N. Y. Tribune.
THE HOUSE OF WILLIAM PENN.

The house occupied by William Penn still
stands. 1t is in Second street, opposite the Penn
sylvania Bank. 1t is two stories high, about forty
feet front, with projecting wirgs, but the center is
boarded out to the line of the latter. 1t is very
venerable, and very dirty. A sort of Old Jewry.
a locksmith snop. retail fruit STALE, and so forth,
distinguish tho once gubernatorial precincts. The
walls are honestly built of old .fashioned thickness.
and so the little squat old concern is tough, and if
cleaned up would last a lot OF lustres to come as
a Quaker momento of early times. But the whole
with other property adjoining, will soon be offered
for sale, and hen-and ~then-where will it go?
1t will 10 improved away unless pious antiquarian
sentiment buy it and cOnsecrate it to Colonial
memories and the spirit of the past. The late El-
lott Cresson left $4,000 toward buying it for civic
acquisition and preservation, but il will take q
much larger sum than thatto save the venerable rel
ic of Leni-Lneape times. The Indifference Of Amer
leans to such acts of flial retrospection and pro-
nunciatlon is in wide contrast with the existence
of the opposite sentiment in Europe, where such
large sums are afectionately spent for the conser-
walton OF things of the olden time. Millions on
miiIons are distributed to keep from decay those
sublime poems of the middle ages, the Gothic ca.
%thedrals the palaces diverted from royal occupa-
ton and open to the people, are freshened and fur
nished in a like spirit and whether it be the an
cient, medieval or latter private houses which
carry Il history with them, they are looked after
and maintained in good order. Such an affec-
W NV IhSp bto VI NdiuO L y 10 %
stimulus. other things being equal, to responsibility
in individuals and communities. What is the main
cause of tho uneqhalled rascalitv in the direction
of the municipal affairs of New York City The
men who administer them are mostly new comerJ,
strangers to the moral landmarks of her his
tory, and find no spiritual guardianship in her To-
cal memories. They are Tartars in Il camp-nom-
AIDE tribes--with u devil-take- the,hindmost creed.
The presence of Faneuil Hall in Boston, of indie
pendence Hall in Philadelphia, cannot be ignored
as s'imulants to an essentially noble patriotism !;
and the example holds good in lesser architectural
souvenirs of the dead centuries.
The Quakers, however, of the old school having
a special moral ring fence to sustain them in a
right course, make terrible havoc with the poetry
of the heart. In their graveyards there are no
tomb slabs OR head-stones All the buried ones
rest in the tranquil socialism of the infinite. No
storied or lying urn-no animated bust-no carved
angels, charming offspring of the Greek artistic
brain, denounced in the Mosaic canons-tell how
the sod clothed dreamer lived and loved, and how
his spirit hopes. No those old bone yards, stuck
in the shock and roar Of business, are simply so
much grassland, where lofty oaks and elms chant
a requiem over The dead, despite the war on art
which living they waged. W. II I. F.