Page:Historic towns of the middle states (IA historictownsofm02powe).pdf/339



PHILADELPHIA

THE CITY PENN FOUNDED AND TO WHICH FRANKLIN GAVE DISTINCTION

TALCOTT WILLIAMS

Cities are of nature. Their long life, flows in ways she has made longer than the changing rule of which they are part. Nations and boundaries are of man and his laws. Artificial creations all. Cities and their sites are of the same forces as form the rivers and ports, the passes and pathways on which they stand and last as long. Rome outlives its empire, and Damascus the shock of massacre from Chedorlaomer to Timur. The cities of Europe are still where they were twenty centuries ago. The civil structure into which they fit has changed until nothing is left of what once was. These things are missed in the general. They come to be seen in the particular.