Naturalists tell us that this eligible site was once characterized by the graceful foliage of the pride of the American forests, the lofty plane-tree, the _platanus occidentalis_. It must further increase our interest in the spot, to be assured that through its shades strolled our Franklin, in company with that lover of rural scenery, the botanist Kalm—an occurrence not unlike the interesting one of the excursions of Linnæus with Hans Sloane, in the Royal Gardens, near London. Here, too, the wild pigeon was taken in great abundance; while in the Common (now Park) those primitive inhabitants of the city, the Beekman family, with the old doctor at their head, shot deer and other game in their field sports. But enough at present of the locality where this anniversary is held. The history of the American periodical press, if given with any thing like fidelity and minuteness, would occupy several hours; it is a noble specimen of our triumphs as a free people, and of our determination so to remain; it has demonstrated the progress of knowledge, and the intrepidity of New-Yorkers, as much as any one series of facts or occurrences we could summon for illustration. Everybody within this hall is aware that William Bradford was the first in time of the newspaper publishers of New-York. His gazette made its earliest appearance in October, 1725, four years after James, the brother of Benjamin Franklin, began the _New England Courant_—this being seventeen years after the commencement of the _Boston News Letter_, the first regular newspaper commenced in North America. I advert to this circumstance because we possess the completed file of that earliest of the journals of our land now in existence. The copy in the library of the Massachusetts Historical Society was presented that institution by the famous antiquary, Dr. Eliot; that in our own Historical Society is the file which was preserved by Professor McKean, of Harvard University, who bequeathed it to the Rev. T. Alden, from whom I purchased it and deposited it where it now remains.