templative aspect, dressed in a suit of drab cloth, flaxen hair slightly powdered, and his eyes fronted with spectacles. The representative chamber had George Latimer for speaker, seated with face to the west-a well formed, manly person; "his fair large front and eye sublime declared absolute rule."

The most conspicuous persons which struck the eye of a lad, were Mr. Coolbaugh, a member from Berks, called the Dutch giant, from his great amplitude of stature and person; and Doctor Michael Leib, the active democratic member-a gentleman of much personal beauty, always fashionably dressed, and seen often moving to and fro in the house, to hold his converse with other members.

But these halls of legislation and court uses were not always restricted to grave debate and civil rule. It sometimes (in colonial days) served the occasion of generous banqueting, and the consequent hilarity and jocund glee. In the long gallery upstairs, where Peale afterwards had his museum, the long tables have been sometimes made to groan with their long array of bountiful repast. I shall mention some such occasions, to wit:

In September, 1736, soon after the edifice was completed, his Honour William Allen, Esq., the mayor, made a feast at his own expense, at the State house, to which all strangers of note were invited. The Gazette of the day says, "All agree that for excellency of fare, and number of guests, it was the most elegant entertainment ever given in these parts."

In August, 1756, the assembly, then in session, on the occasion of the arrival of the new governor, Denny,

gave him a great dinner at the State house, at which were present "the civil and military officers and clergy of the city."

In March, 1757, on the occasion of the visit of Lord Loudon, as commander in chief of the king's troops in the colonies, the city corporation prepared a splendid banquet at the State house, for himself and General Forbes, then commander at Philadelphia, and southward, together with the officers of the royal Americans, the governor, gentlemen strangers, civil officers, and clergy.

Finally, in 1774, when the first congress met in Philadelphia, the gentlemen of the city, having prepared them a sumptuous entertainment at the State house, met at the City tavern, and thence went in procession to the dining hall, where about 500 persons were feasted, and the toasts were accompanied by music and great guns.

For many years the public papers of the colony, and afterwards of the city and state, were kept in the east and west wings of the State house, without any fire proof security as they now possess. From their manifest insecurity, it was deemed expedient, about nine years ago, to pull down those former two story brick wings, and to supply their place by those which are now there. In former times, such important papers as rest with the prothonotaries were kept in their offices at their family residences. Thus Nicholas Biddle long had his in his house, one door west of the present Farmers and Mechanics Bank, in Chesnut street; and Edward Burd had his in his office, up a yard in Fourth street below Walnut street.

In pulling down the western wing, Mr. Grove, the master mason, told me of several curious discoveries made under the foundation, in digging for the present cellars. Close by the western wall of the State house, at the depth of four or five feet, he came to a keg of excellent flints; the wood was utterly decayed, but the impression of the keg was distinct in the loam ground. Near to it he found, at the same depth, the entire equipments of a sergeant-a sword, musket, cartouch-box, buckles, &c.; the wood being decayed, left the impressions of what they had been. They also dug up, close by the same, as many as one dozen bomb shells filled with powder. And two of these, as a freak of the mason's lads, are now actually walled into the new cellar wall on the south side. But for this explanation, a day may yet come when such a discovery might give circulation to another Guy Faux and gunpowder plot story.

OFFICE OF SECRETARY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS.

OUR city, justly fond of her pre-eminence as the home of the founders of an important state, has also the superadded glory of possessing within her precincts the primitive edifice in which the great national concerns of this distinguished republic were commenced and sustained. The small.building of but twelve feet front, now occupied as a small shop for vending cakes

and children's trifles, was once the office of Secretary for Foreign Affairs. From that humble looking bureau were once fulminated those determined and national resolves which made our foreign foes to cower, and secured our independence among the nations: "Though small our means, great were our measures and our end !"

From the contemplation of such a lowly structure, so seemingly disproportionate to our present great attainments, ("a generation more refined improved the simple plan!") the mind recurs back instinctively to those other primitive days, when the energies of the pilgrim founders were in like manner restricted within the narrow bounds of "Lætitia Court," and within the walls of "Lætitia House," on which occasion, Penn's letter of 1687, (in my possession,) recommends "a change of the offices of state, from his cottage, to quarters more commodious."

The "Office for Secretary of Foreign Affairs," under present consideration, is the same building now on the premises of P. S. Duponceau, Esq. situate on the eastern side of South Sixth street, No. 13-a house appropriately owned by such a possessor; for, in it, he, who came as a volunteer to join our fortunes, and to aid our cause, as a captain under Baron Steuben, became afterwards one of the under secretaries to our minister of foreign relations, and in that building gave his active and early services. In the years 1782 and 1783, under that humble roof, presided as our then secretary for foreign affairs, the Hon. Robert R. Livingston. Up stairs, in the small front room facing the

street, sat that distinguished personage, wielding by his mind and pen the destinies of our nation.

Mr. Duponceau, from whom I have derived much of these facts, which passed under his immediate observation, has occasionally delighted himself and me in describing, with good humoured emotion and picturesque delineation, the various scenes which have there occasionally occurred, and the great personages who have frequently clambered up the dark and narrow winding stairs, to make their respects to or their negotiations with the representative of the nation-such as the Marquis La Fayette, Count Rochambeau, the Duke de Lauzan, Count Dillon, Prince Guemenée, &c. Our own great men, such as Madison, Morris, Hamilton, Mifflin, &c. were visiters of course. After the peace, in the same small upper chamber, were received the homage of the British General Allured Clark, and the famous Major Hanger, once the favourite of the late George IV.

This frail fabric, in veneration of its past services, (though a thing now scarcely known to our citizens as a matter "in common parlance,") is devoted, during the life of its present generous and feeling owner, "to remain (as he says) a proud monument of the simplicity of the founders of our revolution." It is, in truth, as deserving of encomium for its humble moderation, as was the fact, renowned in history, respecting the republic of the Netherlands in her best days, when her grand pensionary, Heinsius, was deemed superlatively ennobled, because he walked the streets of the Hague with only a single servant, and sometimes with even none. Quite as worthy of memorial was the equivalent fact,