Page:History of the University of Pennsylvania - Montgomery (1900).djvu/303

Rh for Independence. 7 When the British sought revenge in the Jerseys by destroying the houses of the principal Whigs, when their movement in Philadelphia by that course proved a failure, and in which the Borden Mansion fell a victim to the flames, Hopkinson's house was also fired, but escaped destruction in a singular manner. It is related that Captain Ewald, a Hessian officer, who was in command of the party of British employed in firing the houses, entering Hopkinson's was amazed to find his library filled with scientific apparatus in addition to the books on the walls; and picking up a volume of Provost Smith's Discourses, he wrote in his Mother tongue, "This man was one of the greatest rebels, nevertheless, if we dare to conclude from the Library, and Mechanical and Mathematical Instruments, he must have been a very learned man; " and he spared the house from the flames. He was at Bordentown when the melancholy tidings reached him of Duche's defection, and thence he wrote to him his letter of wounded affection and yet patriotic scorn, which he sent under cover to Gen. Washington: The Intimacy of my connection with Mr Duche renders all- assurance unnecessary that the letter addressed by him to your Excellency on the 8th of October last year gives me the greatest concern. I would not forbear communicating some of my sentiments to him on this occasion. These I might probably have been able to convey to him by secret means, but did not chuse to incur the imputation of a clandestine correspondence. I have therefore taken the liberty to send the enclosed letter to you unsealed for your perusal. Resting it entirely on your judgement to cause it to [be] forwarded or not. The occasion is a very interesting one to me. My friendship for Mr Duche calls upon me to do all I can to warn him against the fatal consequences of his ill-advised step, that he may if possible do something to avert them before it is too late. But the letter never reached its destination, Washington writing him 27 January, 1778: 7 It was shortly after this he and John Adams met; the latter writing to hiswife from Philadelphia 21 August, 1776, says: " I met Mr Francis Hopkinson, late a Mandamus Counsellor of New Jersey, now a member of the Continental Congress, who, it seems is a native of Philadelphia, a son of a prothonotary of this county, who. is a person much respected. The son was liberally educated, and is a painter and a poet. I may possibly give you some more particulars concerning him." Letters to his Wife, Boston, 1841, i. 157.