Penn's_ Silvania (_Penn's Woods_), in honor of the recipient's
father, Sir William Penn, a distinguished officer in the British navy.
Penn sought to have the title changed so as to leave his own name out,
as he thought it savored too much of personal vanity; but his efforts
did not avail. And thus our great old commonwealth took the name of
_Pennsylvania_, and the city of Philadelphia was laid out and named by
Penn himself as its capital.

THE MEN OF THOSE TIMES.

In dwelling upon the founding of our happy commonwealth it is pleasant
to contemplate how enlightened and exalted were the men whom
Providence employed for the performance of this important work.

Many are apt to think ours the age of culminated enlightenment,
dignity, wisdom, and intelligence, and look upon the fathers of two
and three hundred years ago as mere pigmies, just emerging from an era
of barbarism and ignorance, not at all to be compared with the proud
wiseacres of our day. Never was there a greater mistake. The
shallowness and flippancy of the leaders and politicians of this last
quarter of the nineteenth century show them but little more than
school-boys compared with the sturdy, sober-minded, deep-principled,
dignified, and grand-spirited men who discovered and opened this
continent and laid the foundations of our country's greatness. And
those who were most concerned in the founding of our own commonwealth
suffer in no respect in comparison with the greatest and the best.

GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS.

I have named the illustrious GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS as the man,
above all, who first conceived, sketched, and propounded the grand
idea of such a state. What other colonies reached only through varied
experiments and gradual developments, Pennsylvania had clear and
mature, in ideal and in fact, from the very earliest beginning; and
the royal heart and brain of Sweden were its source.

Gustavus Adolphus was born a prince in the regular line of Sweden's
ancient kings. His grandfather, Gustavus Vasa, was a man of thorough
culture, excellent ability, and sterling moral qualities. When in
Germany he was an earnest listener to Luther's preaching, became his
friend and correspondent, a devout confessor and patron of the
evangelic faith, and the wise establisher of the Reformation in his
kingdom.

Adolphus inherited all his grandfather's high qualities. He was the
idol of his father, Charles IX., and was devoutly trained from
earliest childhood in the evan