Near the close of 1682 Penn purchased lands lying between the Delaware and the Schuylkill, at their confluence, for the purpose of founding a capital city. Already the Swedes had built a church there; **** and the situation was "not surpassed," in the estimation of Penn, "by one among all the many places he had seen in the world." With great joy and brilliant hopes they marked the boundaries of streets on the trunks of the chestnut, maple, ash, and walnut trees of the original forest, and gave them names derived from these natural landmarks. They called the city Philadelphia--_brotherly love_--and with unexampled rapidity the forest disappeared, and pleasant houses uprose upon the "virgin Elysian shore." In March, 1683, the second Assembly of the province convened in the infant city, and, at the suggestion of Penn, the original "form of government" was so amended, that the "charter of liberties" signed by him at that time rendered the government of Pennsylvania, [[August, 1684]] all but in name, a representative democracy. Penn soon afterward returned to England, having first appointed five commissioners, with Thomas Loyd as president, to administer his government during his absence. Every thing went on prosperously, and nothing occurred to disturb the quiet of the new state until 1691, when the "three lower * Bancroft, ii., 337. ** Ibid., ii., 382. *** Ibid., ii., 383. **** Several years before the arrival of Penn, the upper Swedish settlement on the Delaware erected a blockhouse at Wicaco, now the district of Southwark. The block-house was converted into a church for the convenience of the settlement, the port-holes serving for windows. The first sermon was preached in it in 1677. This edifice stood upon a pleasant knoll sloping to the river. North of it, where Christian Street is, was an inlet, and beyond this was another knoll, on whieh was ereeted the house of three Swedish brothers, Sven, Oele, and Andries Swenson [Swanson], from whom Penn purchased the site of Philadelphia. This building was noticed by Kahn in 1748; and Mr. Watson, in his Annals of Philadelphia, (i., 148), says, "the original log-house was standing until the British occupied Philadelphia, when it was taken down and converted into fuel." A brick church was built upon the site of the old block-house in 1700, and is still standing on Swanson Street, a little distance from the navy yard. [[[Secession of Delaware.--Penn's Difficulties.--His liberal Concessions.--Pennsylvania Charter.--Penn's Heirs.]]]