first Swedish settlement was destroyed by fire. Mrs. Preston, the grandmother of Samuel Preston, an aged gentleman lately alive, often told him of their being driven from thence, by being burnt out, and then going off by invitation to an Indian settlement in Bucks County. In Campanius' work, he speaks of Korsholm fort, (supposed to be the same place) as being abandoned after Governor Pintz returned to Sweden, and afterwards burned by the Indians; very probably as a measure of policy, to diminish the strength of their new masters, the Dutch; or perhaps to show their retained affection to the Swedes, and their aversion to the Dutch. So they did when they burned the place which the Dutch had constructed at Gloucester Point. There seems at least some coincidence in the two stories.

The road through Wiccaco to Gloucester Point was petitioned for, and granted by the Council in the year 1720, and called—the road through the marsh.

The ground of the Swedes' Church contains the monument and remains of Wilson the ornithologist, who desired such a then retired place, where birds, amid its trees, might carol over his grave.

For many years, this venerable church-while it stood far from the town, was essentially a Country Church, and in that relation it brings up to the fancy the poetic description of Mrs. Seba Smith-to wit:

They all are passing from the land
Those Churches old and gray,
In which our fathers used to stand
In years gone by, to pray-

There meekly knelt, those stern old men,
Who worshipped at our Altars then.

It was a church low built and square,
With belfry perched on high,
And no unseemly carvings there
To shock the pious eye-
That belfry was a modest thing,
In which a bell was wont to swing.

It stood, like many a country church,
Upon a spacious green:

Whence stile and by-path go in search
Of cot, the hills between,

The rudest boor that turf would spare,

And turn aside his team with care.

I smile with no sarcastic smile

As I each group review,

That came by many a long, long mile,
In garments fresh and new;

The Sunday dress-the Sunday air,

The thorough-greased and Sunday hair.

The straight, stiff walk, with Sunday suit,
The squeaking leather shoe,

The solemn air of man and brute,

As each the Sabbath knew;
The conscious air as passed the maid,
The swains collected in the shade.

The females enter straight the door,
And talk with those within-
The elders on town matters pore,
Nor deem it deadly sin.

And now the pastor grave and slow,
Along the aisle is seen to go.

Down drop the children from the seat,

The groups disperse around

Pew doors are slamm'd and gathering feet
Give out a busy sound-

The sounding pipe and viol string

No longer through the old church ring.

I do remember with what awe

That pulpit filled mine eye,
As through the balusters I saw
The sounding board on high,

Those balusters!-a childish crime

Alas! I've squeaked in sermon time.

Hard thinkers were they, those old men,
And patient too I ween-

Long words and knotty questions then
But made our fathers keen.

I doubt me if their sons would hear
Such lengthy sermons year by year.

But all are passing fast away-
Those abstruse thinkers too-
Old churches with their walls of gray
Must yield to something new-
Be-Gothic'd things, all neat and white,
Greet every where the traveller's sight.

PENNY-POT HOUSE AND LANDING.

It was long after I first saw the above title that I met with any certain means of establishing its location at Vine Street. Proud spoke of it as "near to Race Street," and none of the aged whom I interrogated knew any thing about it. Of course it would be still less known to any modern Philadelphian, although it had been bestowed as a gift to the city by Penn, and was made memorable as the birth-place of " the first born." Some of the following facts will fully certify its location at Vine Street.

VOL. I.-U

In the year 1701, William Penn sets forth and ordains "that the land ing places now and heretofore used at the Penny Pot-House and Blue Anchor, shall be left open and common for the use of the city," &c.

The landing appears to have derived its name from the Inn built there, which was early famed for its beer at a penny a pot. The house itself was standing in my time as the Jolly Tar Inn, kept by one Tage. It was a two story brick house of good dimensions, having for its front a southern exposure. At first it had no intervening houses between it and the area of Vine Street; but when I last saw it, as many as three houses had filled up that space. The aged Joseph Norris of that neighbourhood, who died a few years agc in his ninetieth year, told me he remembered in his youth to have seen a sign affixed to the house, and having thereon the words, Penny-Pot Free Landing."

At the time when the city was first formed, the general high bluffland of the river bank made it extremely difficult to receive wood, lumber or goods into the city, except by the "low sandy beach" at the Blue Anchor, (i. e. at Dock Creek,) and at Vine Street, which lay along "a vale," and therefore first caused that street to be called "Valley Street.” As a landing of more width than usual to other streets, it still belongs to the city at the present day.

On the same area, and on the first water lot above it, was for many years the active ship-yards of Charles West, who came out with Penn, and began his career by building him a vessel, for which in part pay he received the lot on which the present William West, Esqr., his grandson, has his salt stores and wharf. The vessels once built on that site extended their bowsprits up to Penny-Pot House, and those built upon the area of Vine Street extended the jib-boom across Front Street to the eaves of West's House-then a two story building on the north-west corner of Vine and Front Streets. Ship building was for many years a very active and profitable concern,-building many ships and brigs for orders in England and Ireland, and producing in this neighbourhood a busy scene in that line.

The aged John Brown and some others told me there were originally rope-walks along the line of Cable Lane; from which circumstance it received its title; and much ship timber and many saw-pits were thereabout. Mrs. Steward, an old lady of 93, told me she remembered when the neighbourhood of Cable Lane was all in whortleberry bushes; and, as late as 1754, it may be seen in the Gazette, that William Rakestraw then advertises himself as living "in the uppermost house in Water Street, near Vine Street," and there keeping his board yard.

The occasional state of Penny-Pot may be learned from the several presentments of the Grand Jury at successive periods, to wit:

The Duke of York's law," still preserved in MS. on Long Island, shows that the price of beer was fixed in his colony at a penny a pint; and Penn, in 1683, speaks of abundance of malt beer in use then at the Inns.