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land was given to William Penn, and his Majesty, in honour of 
Penn’s father, Admiral Penn, called it Pennsylvania; he, Wil¬ 
liam Penn, had proposed the name of New Wales, but the'king 
did not sanction this name; Penn then offered to the secretary 
of the king twenty guineas, if he would persuade the king to call 
the country merely Sylvania; but even this proposition did not 
succeed; the name of Pennsylvania was very unpleasant to him; 
for they would think it great vanity in him, although he was 
very far from being vain. In his observations concerning the 
manufactures of Pennsylvania, the orator went now and then too 
far. He said, for instance, that nowhere, not even in Europe, 
are better carriages made than in Philadelphia, although the car¬ 
riages of this place are not the very best nor the most convenient. 
The school establishments, however, he pointed out in a too in¬ 
different light, and confessed complainingly that in the northern 
states they were farther advanced than here; he particularly ob¬ 
served that the University of Pennsylvania was in a poor condi¬ 
tion. He also complained of the dissipation of the lower classes. 
This oration was much applauded; the audience likewise exhi¬ 
bited their respect to the President as he retired. 
I sat next to Judge Peters, a venerable gentleman of eighty- 
two years of age, who was secretary of war during the revolu¬ 
tion; moreover, I was introduced here to Mr. Washington, ne¬ 
phew of the hero, and Judge in the Supreme Court of the United 
States. He is the heir of his uncle, and possessor of Mount Ver¬ 
non, where his ashes rest. After the oration I inspected the 
anatomical cabinet of the University; it is not a rich collection, 
but has some interesting articles, viz. two wax figures of full size, 
which can be taken to pieces; also a collection of human skulls, 
among which I remarked particularly the flattened skulls of two 
Peruvian Indians, and also a skeleton of a Creek Indian; many 
samples of fractured and badly cured human bones, and many 
curious bones; parts of the human body, injected or preserved in 
alcohol, &c. 
At four o’clock, P. M. I drove with Mr. Vauxto the Masonic 
Hall, where the dinner was to be given. About seventy persons, 
mostly gentlemen of my acquaintance, were present. The 
President of the United States sat on the right of Judge Peters, 
who was president of the dinner, and sat in William Penn’s 
chair; I sat on the left of this worthy old gentleman, and on my 
left was the orator of the day, Mr. Ingersoll. Behind Judge 
Peters’s chair was William Penn’s portrait, painted in oil, and 
under that was a copperplate of his well known treaty with the 
Indians. The vice-president of the table was Mr. Duponceau, 
a Frenchman who has resided in this country forty-seven years, 
and during the revolution was adjutant to Baron Steuben ; he is 
