The Quaker city may well be the pride of the American nation. Founded by William Penn, shortly after his settlement of Pennsylvania in the year 1682, it has become, after the lapse of two centuries, the most important town in the United States. Second to New York only in the matter of population, it is, at present, the first manufacturing city in the whole country; whilst it has long held supremacy as the centre of literary and philosophical activity. In the centenary year of 1876, Philadelphia possessed no less than 146 daily and weekly newspapers, and twenty public libraries: no bad sign of the state of intellectual advancement of a town containing about seven hundred thousand inhabitants. The population consists largely of members of the Society of Friends, or of their descendants; but there is always a considerable foreign element in the city: the Irish numbering about one-seventh, the Germans one-thirteenth, and the English one-thirtieth. There are at least 400 churches and chapels, and more than 400 public schools; and 100 hospitals and asylums. The causes of the prosperity of Philadelphia are not difficult to be discovered. It is noticeable, that all flourishing capitals are marked by strong cosmopolitan features, with a background of national characteristic. The characteristic basis of the Pennsylvanian is his Quaker ancestry; and upon this has been grafted, in varying proportions, the religious and political notions, the manners, customs, and national prejudices, of English, Scotch, German, Irish, Welsh, Swedish, and other emigrants, ever since the middle of the last century. The capital of the state took the full-flow of this tide of immigration; further augmented during and after the war of independence, by a number of French people seeking for that peace and security which was denied them in their native land. With all these varying elements, however, the frugal, patient, industrious Quaker spirit has pervaded the place; and reduced all this complexity to some sort of harmony. Of party spirit there has, naturally, been much activity; indeed, at the period of our history, it prevailed more extensively than in almost any other town in the United States; but the cultivation of knowledge, of the useful arts, and of commercial enterprise, have been the agents in producing the prosperous and beautiful capital of Pennsylvania.