1644

WILLIAM PENN.

WILLIAM PENN, eldest child of Sir

William Penn, the Admiral, and Margaret Jasper, the daughter of an opulent merchant at Rotterdam, was born in London, October 14th, 1644. He had a healthful, robust constitution, and his childhood was beautiful and promising. Under the direction of a private tutor, he advanced in useful and elegant scholarship, retaining that fondness for athletic exercises which preserved a safe and graceful equilibrium of body and mind.

While at Oxford, he gave great satisfaction to his superiors, by close, severe study; while in seasons of recreation, his skill as a sportsman, and the vigor of his strokes with the oar,

as his boat glided over the Thames, made him equally a favorite with his young companions. Among the valuable friends whom he gained at the University, was the celebrated John Locke, who, though twelve years his senior, appreciated his talents and acquirements. His reading, for one so young, was extensive, and his retentive powers remarkable. He attained a thorough acquaintance with History and Theology, and not satisfied with the Greek and Latin classics, became perfectly a master of French and German, Dutch and Italian. Such was his facility for acquiring languages, that he added, later in life, several dialects of the American Indians, when his young dreams of a settlement beneath the shade of the lofty forests of the New World took the coloring of reality.

His mind, which with all its sprightliness, had a native tendency to religious thought and research, became interested in the new doctrines of the Friends, as exhibited by George Fox and his followers. His attendance on their preaching, which was deemed an irregularity, and some excesses of zeal in which he

indulged, caused his dismissal from the University. The father, who felt this as a deep disgrace, and had no affinity for any form of piety that should involve worldly loss, received him with stern displeasure. Yet, after awhile, pitying the dejection of spirit which the ingenuous boy felt, at seeing what unhappiness his expulsion had caused at home, determined, if possible, to dissipate his religious impressions, by sending him to spend some time in Paris.

To the gayest and most licentious city in Europe, William Penn went at the age of seventeen; probably unfortified by paternal counsels, since the object of his mission was not his protection from vice, but the destruction of what was deemed fanaticism. He was presented, under flattering auspices, to the elegant monarch Louis XIV., and became a favorite at court. He was familiarly acquainted with some of the English nobility, of the highest distinction, who were then abroad, and was comprehended among the most graceful and brilliant circles in Paris and Versailles.

Desiring to regain the good opinion of his

father, and understanding that he desired him after his foreign polishing should be completed, to devote himself to a military life, he endeavored to turn his tastes toward that profession. Amid the throngs of pleasure that on every side solicited him, and incited by filial duty to choose a calling for life, where religious restraint was but lightly esteemed, he was still pursuing a course of study which very few in those circumstances would have selected or relished. At Saumur, under the learned Amyrault, one of the most distinguished professors of Divinity that adorned the Reformed Church of that realm, he diligently read the Fathers, discussed the historic and philosophic basis of theology, and extensively and critically examined the language and literature of France.

He commenced his European tour with every advantage from letters of introduction and his own personal accomplishments. After two years absence from home, he returned at the age of nineteen, with attainments and capacities beyond his years. A quotation

from Dixon, his best biographer, will give a graphic description of him at this period :

"Tall, and well-set, his figure promised physical strength and hardihood of constitution. His face was mild, and of almost womanly beauty; his eye soft and full; his brow open and ample; his features well defined, and approaching the ideal Greek in contour; the lines about his mouth exquisitely sweet, yet resolute in expression. Like Milton, he wore his hair long, and parted in the centre of his forehead, from which it fell over his neck and shoulders, in rich, massive, natural ringlets. In mien and manners, he seemed formed by nature, as well as stamped by art- a gentleman."

The father was delighted with the son, and with the apparent result of his own policy. He entered him as a student at Lincoln's Inn, he introduced him to peers and princes, he produced him proudly at court to Charles II., then newly restored; he confidently entrusted him with the king's business and his own.

He sent him to superintend his extensive estates in Ireland, where the young lord and