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PHILADELPHIA
THE CITY PENN FOUNDED AND TO WHICH FRANKLIN GAVE DISTINCTION
By TALCOTT WILLIAMS
Cities are of nature. Their long life,
flows in ways she has made longer than
the changing rule of which they are part.
Nations and boundaries are of man and his
laws. Artificial creations all. Cities and their
sites are of the same forces as form the
rivers and ports, the passes and pathways on
which they stand and last as long. Rome outlives
its empire, and Damascus the shock of
massacre from Chedorlaomer to Timur. The
cities of Europe are still where they were
twenty centuries ago. The civil structure into
which they fit has changed until nothing is left
of what once was. These things are missed
in the general. They come to be seen in the
particular.
