The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-06-04
THE BROKEN IDOLS OF PHILADELPHIA.
Eronnk In uynald


From the N. Y. World.
During the war loyal folks-and especially
Loyal League folls-all over the country had
many droll idols at whose feet they grovelled.
Many of these little queer gods like Bel in the
Apocrypha, have of late come to grief. Espe-
cially has this been the case with the foreign
divinitics, English and Continental. Peto came,
like Jupiter, in a shower of gold, and was hon
ored; and Peto is long since bankrupt alike of
his dollars and his divinity. Golden was much
worshipped, but luckily died in time to escape
iconoclasm. John Bright had all manner Of in
cense flung under his nose; but, now that he
shakes his head about the Alabama and turns
up that much incensed nose irreverently at Sum-
ner, he is served with unsayory odors and
esteemed no true deity. The radicals fear
that England, counting on our past wor-
ship of him, may send him TO
negotiate with Secretary Fish, and they
feel it in their bones that they will find
him as dogged John Bull as the bluest-blooded
peer of the British realm. The Duke of Argyll
himself, on whose drawing-roOm table, amidst
the tears of titled women, Sumner spread his
bloody shirt, is more than half suspected since
the World named him as n discreet and safe
person to treat with us. Goodwin Smith, at
whose restless itineTant feet garlands were so
layishly strewn, has fallen into absolute dis
grace. Has he not snubbed Sumner, and ac-
tually alarmed the st. Georges societies? Even
Philadelphia community where intellectual
mediocrty is rarely felt to be offensive; and any
form of intellectual, not to say moral peryersity,
IL loyal is easily torglYen-letS her FOrney loose
on Goodwin, and recognizes in the European
Sodom no righteous men left save Newman Hall
and Edmond Laboulaye and a few more
sprightly French and English folks of that des-
cription. But poor Philadelphia is unusually
sour, for she has recently had one wound sharper
than all others. Every one acquainted with that
metropolis knows that, if there be one point on
which its local sensitiveness amounts to disease,
that point is the fair fame of 'The Founder y
When, years ago, Lord Macaulay very unfairly,
as we think implicated William Penn with the
maids of honor great was the wrath of Phlla-
delpha.
1t is said, and Philadelphians believe, that the
statue of Penn mt their hospital-roused to life,
| like the lion of Percy on Northumberland House
by the insolence of George IV-shoolI itself with
un-Quakerly indignation, and stamped its foot.
| The Historical Society certainly went mad into
| print. Mr.. Carey for time was thrust aside in
the press, and long essays in vindieation of the
sainted Quakerreplaced his dreary diatribes upon
British free trade in the daily journals. FOrney
| hurled his then Democratic thunder at the
| slanderOus peer One eminent lawyer, who
| Tor years had William Penn under his especial
care, died not long after Overtasked, 1t was
| supposed, by intellectual effort in the cause,
leaving q legacy of pamphlets and addresses,
| OIL which Maeaulay probably died, and from
Whlch philadelphia has never yet quite re-
| covered The result was that the historian was
ulseredlted and the purity of William Penn, as
IL was thought, made a shining dogma forever.
But, alas not so. Among the brightest and