James Edward Oglethorpe was the third son of Sir Theophilus Oglethorpe, of Godalming, Surrey. At a suitable age he entered the army, and became secretary and aide-de-camp to Prince Eugene. In 1722 he succeeded to his father’s estate, and obtained a seat in parliament, which he retained nearly thirty years. From the first, he showed himself to be a steady and faithful friend of humanity. These were days of harsh government. The gallows was the penalty for petty thefts; and each year, at least four thousand unhappy men in Great Britain were immured in prison for the misfortune of being poor. A small debt was quite enough to expose a struggling man to a perpetuity of imprisonment; and an indiscreet bargain doomed many a well-meaning, miserable dupe to lifelong confinement. Oglethorpe obtained a parliamentary committee, to inquire into the state of prisons; the result of which was that a large number of debtors were released from confinement, and restored to light and to liberty. Being released, it was a serious question what to do with them. It so happened that, though the whole of the eastern seaboard of America seemed to be already parcelled out among companies and colonists, there was still remaining a comparatively small strip of country, intervening between South Carolina and Florida, and situated between the river Alatamaha on the south and the river Savannah on the north, and having a sea-coast stretching a distance of sixty or seventy miles. This strip of land was a wilderness over which England held only a nominal jurisdiction; but it occurred to Oglethorpe and his friends to plant in this sunny clime those children of misfortune whom they had released from prison, but who were still without food and shelter. Accordingly, on the 9th of June, 1732, a charter was obtained from George II., erecting this thin slice of America into the province of Georgia, and appointing Oglethorpe and twenty other gentlemen (of whom Dr. Burton was one) trustees to hold the same for a period of one and twenty years, “in trust for the poor.” The benevolence of England was aroused. The trustees set an example of princely liberality by their private subscriptions; the Bank of England presented a donation of £10,000; an equal amount was voted by the House of Commons; and the total sum raised, with but little effort, and almost without solicitation, was £36,000. Within five months after the signing of the charter, the first company of emigrants, one hundred and twenty in number, set sail, with Oglethorpe as their commander, and the Rev. Henry Herbert, a clergyman of the Established Church, as their minister. At the commencement of the month of February, 1733, the colonists reached the high bluff on which Savannah is now erected, and encamped near the edge of the river. The streets of the intended town were laid out with the greatest regularity; and the houses were to be constructed on one model,—each a frame of sawn timber, measuring