Page:Architectural Review and American Builders' Journal, Volume 1, 1869.djvu/159

 1868.] TJie Penn Treaty-Ground and a Monument to William Penn. 131 In IT 41 a few lingered in the forks of the Delaware. Being in the way of the whites there, it was thought best to send for Canassatego, a chief of the Mengwes, who harangued the Delawares in council in a style, probably much more forcible than agreeable. He said : "We conquered " you in battle. We made women of you. " Retire to the other side of the Dela- "ware." And the Lenape implicitly obeyed.* This was hardly the result of acquiescence in Iroquois right, but, rather, submission to the preponderant weight of Iroquois numbers. According to the Indian practice, had the Men- gwe really conquered the Lenape, the latter would have been fairly merged in the different tribes of the victorious confederacy. Thus we see uprightness temporarily failing before finesse, and the insinuating profession of comity quickly changing into the arrogance of intolerable oppression. It was no more than poetical justice that, at Fort Stanwix, - )" on the Mohawk, the heart of their own country, the crafty descend- ants of the crafty Mengwe should be obliged forever to abjure any semblance of superiority over the descendants of the very Lenape, who, at Norman's Kill, near the Hudson, in deference to the general Indian weal, had formally re- nounced Indian warfare. And so the waters of the Mohawk — from the far-off region of the greater and the lesser lakes — ever sweeping past the mouth, and mingling — in the bosom of the Hudson — with the waters of Norman's Kill, constantly murmur, " Once upon your banks, one great tribe was deceived by another, through a great wrong ; but long after, upon our shores, that wrong was redressed, to be repeated never more." MONUMENTS not QUAKE RLY : BUT PEOPLE-LIKE. Not with the consent of William Penn t Rome, N. Y. himself, if he were living, not with the approbation of the Society of Friends, to which he belonged, could we erect a Monument to the Founder of the Com- monwealth of Pennsylvania. But the separatists of one era are the moderat- ists of the next. Sects, as well as men, have their appointed time, and die ; but whatever they possess of real truth lives on forever. That which is in harmony with nature endures, but that which is contrary to nature perishes. The Friends, iu many respects, have modified their practices, if not their tenets. They once eschewed represen- tative art of every kind. Now they have choicely illustrated books upon their tables, and fine engravings upon their walls. Not unlikely, too, some of them may confess and indulge a taste for statuary. At all events, it is not upon our dead worthy, or on the chil- dren of his co-religionists, that we have now to work ; but upon the great outer world, including, we fear, much of the flesh, although not altogether destitute of the spirit. The Friends, themselves, are a living monument — of a very sturdj' - material, though, it must be confessed, of the plainest possible design and execution — to the Memory and Divine Love of the SAVIOUR: — in the grand in-gathering of creeds and works, at the fulness of time, to be one of the blocks of that ever-during monument of human souls, designed and erecting — without the sound of a hammer, — without the motion of a hand, — without the word of a lip, — in — by — to — and for — the Glory of GOD. THE CHARACTER OF PENN We, certainly, cannot add one parti- cle to the good fame of Penn. The son of an Admiral and a hero, himself a hero yet greater ; far and well descend- ed, through both father and mother; handsome and accomplished ; the pet of fortune ; the companion and the favorite of kings ; he yet dared differ
 * James N. Barker.