Page:Henry Adams' History of the United States Vol. 1.djvu/138

1800.

All these men—Wilson, Brackenridge, Freneau—were democrats, and came not within the Federalist circle where Moore could alone see a hope for Colum­bia. Yet the names of Federalists also survived in literature. Alexander Graydon's pleasant Memoirs could never lose interest. Many lawyers, clergymen, and physicians left lasting records. Dallas was bring­ing out his reports; Duponceau was laboring over jurisprudence and languages; William Lewis, William Rawle, and Judge Wilson were high authorities at the bar; Dr. Wistar was giving reputation to the Phila­delphia Medical School, and the famous Dr. Physic was beginning to attract patients from far and near as the best surgeon in America. Gilbert Stuart, the best painter in the country, came to Philadelphia, and there painted portraits equal to the best that England or France could produce,—for Reynolds and Gainsborough were dead, and Sir Thomas Lawrence ruled the fashion of the time. If Franklin and Rittenhouse no longer lived to give scientific fame to Philadelphia their liberal and scientific spirit survived. The reputation of the city was not confined to America, and the accident that made a Philadelphian, Benjamin West, President of the Royal Academy in succession to Sir Joshua Reynolds, was a tacit compliment, not undeserved, to the character of the American metropolis.

There manners were milder and more humane elsewhere. Societies existed for lessening the hardships of the unfortunate. A society labored for the