Page:Scribner's Monthly, Volume 12 (May–October 1876).djvu/7

 ScRiBNER's MONTHLY. VOL. XII. MAY, 1876. No. i. PORTRAITURE OF WILLIAM PENN. WILLIAM PENN IN ARMOR (AFTER SCHOFF'S STEEL ENGRAVING FROM THE ORIGINAL).



THERE are few historical pictures that have taken firmer hold of the public mind, within the last hundred years, than West's painting of Penn's Treaty with the Indians. The event which it depicts is uniformly regarded as the most memorable in the history of the settlement of America ; typical of just deal- ing with the aborigines, it is described by an English historian as " the most glori- ous in the annals of the world." Our own VOL. XII. i. Bancroft contemplates with pride the meet- ing of William Penn, surrounded by a few friends in the habiliments of peace, with the numerous delegation of the Lenni Lenape tribes. " The Great Treaty was not," says he, " for the purchase of lands, but was held for confirming what Penn had written and Markham covenanted ; its sublime pur- pose was the recognition of the equal rights of humanity."