SOCIETY IN PHILADELPHIA.

I.

No just exhibition can be given of American society in the days of Washington, which does not present in considerable fulness a view of society in Philadelphia. The early career of Washington was connected with this city. Here was assembled the Congress of 1776, and around it, as around a centre, are clustered many memories of the revolution. From Philadelphia the constitution was given to the world. "Here, most of all," to use the language of Mr. Everett, "was the home of Washington; here he resided for a longer term than he did in any other place, his own Virginia alone excepted. Six most important years of his life were spent in Philadelphia; the house in which he lived is known; his seat in church is still pointed out; persons yet survive who have felt the touch of his hands upon their childish heads; and this spot, we may well believe, will be among the last where his memory will cease to be revered, and the last where the love of that union and that constitution which was so near to his great heart, will ever be forgotten." In the present chapter I shall therefore describe with some particularity this former metropolis of our country, its territorial extent and progress, its families who were most distinguished, its religious sects, its professions of divinity, law,

and medicine, and, so far as I can, "sitting," as Lord Bacon says, "so far off," and with such lights as I have, whatever made social system.

up its

The families whose names appear on the twelfth and thirteenth pages of this volume, where, with other records, I have transcribed the lists of the old "City Dancing Assembly," still remained the principal people of Philadelphia when the revolution broke out. A few adhered to the British cause, such as the Galloways, some of the Allens, the Penns, and, I think, several of the Lawrences and Bonds, who returned to England. Others, apparently of Scottish origin, whose allegiance to the house of Hanover was never very strong, retired to their seats in the country. This, I presume, was the case with the Græmes, who resided during the early part of the war at Græme Park. I am not able to state from any records to which I have had access, to what extent the respectable family of McCall supported the revolutionary cause. Mr. Wallace retired to a seat of his called Ellerslie, in New Jersey, at which place, or at Burlington, his family remained until his grandsons, in 1797, went back to their residence in Philadelphia. There were other families, such as that of Lardner, connected with the Proprietaries, whose movements I have not been able to trace. The return of peace brought some change, of course, in the social structure. A successful revolution had been accomplished. Men who before were but little known in the public or social sphere had now become leaders in one, and aspired to be equals in the other. An eccentric loyalist who had left the city in 1776, laments pathetically on his return in 1791, that on looking over the Directory he "scarce knew above three or four names in a hundred," that his "native country appeared almost a desert," and that "the upstarts made him feel too sensibly the difference between his present and former condition." That portion of the