Among later members of the society have been such men as Noah Webster, Josiah Quincy, Washington Irving, Elisha Kent Kane, the Arctic explorer, the Count de Lesseps, Mr. Gladstone, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, George Bancroft, the historian, James Russell Lowell, and the two great naturalists, Louis Agassiz, and Joseph Leidy, both of whom, with their vast learning, retained through life a childlike frankness and simplicity that endeared them to all who approached them. Those who met Professor Agassiz by the sea, during his vacation seasons, and heard from his own lips of the wonders of the shore, and those who listened to a popular lecture of Dr. Leidy, in which he described the life and customs of the minute creatures to be found in a drop of pond water, will always rejoice that it was their privilege to journey even a little way into the fairy-land of science with such masters for their guides. Of the pleasure and profit of a more thorough penetration into its mysteries and enchantments under such preceptors, those who were fortunate enough to be numbered among the students of Agassiz and Leidy speak with enthusiasm. The Philosophical Society, grown gray and venerable, now celebrates, May, 1893, its one hundred and fiftieth birthday. Although numbering a large corps of native and foreign members, working in various branches of knowledge, and contributing to its regularly issued publications valuable papers, the present fraternity feel that the society’s proudest claim to distinction lies in the fact that it fostered literature, science, and invention in the young nation, and thus became the _alma mater_ of many institutions that have gone forth from its protecting arms to become, in their turn, centres of light and usefulness. [Illustration] FOOTNOTES: [19] Benjamin Franklin as a Man of Letters, by John Bach McMaster, p. 137. [20] Life of Benjamin Franklin, by James Parton, vol. i. p. 263. [21] Works of Franklin, by Jared Sparks, vol. ii. p. 9. [22] Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, pp. 1, 2. [23] Charles Willson Peale’s copy of Martin’s Franklin, the original of which is owned by Mr. Henry Pratt McKean. [24] Benjamin Franklin as a Man of Letters, by John Bach McMaster, p. 277. [Illustration: THE WISTAR PARTIES] If the impulse towards learning early given by the American Philosophical Society has found expression in Philadelphia, and other cities, in historical societies, scientific schools, academies of natural science, and kindred institutions, its more genial and social side has long been represented in the city of its birth by the Wistar Parties.