lication. The Commercial, Republican, formerly vicinity of Colonel McComb's modernized mana two cent, but now a one cent, daily would sion are several old-fashioned substantial and probably claim the most newspaper dignity and more home-like residences of the Southern sort, character. Every Evening, independent, embodies in which the old spirit still reigns. what a few years ago was a good part of the talent of the Commercial, and is decidedly a live and spicy evening visitor. The Morning Herald, Democratic, has a tone of less experience and more violence. There are other dailies, and some weeklies, all trying to save their own necks and the common country as earnestly as possible. Stepping along Sixth street to French, the Public High School No. I will be found. It is a large structure, conveniently arranged for the purposes that led to its erection, and is a fair indication of the interest long felt by Wilmington in educational matters, while the subject was sadly neglected in other portions of the State. In the neighborhood of the newspapers on Market street is the Clayton House, Wilmington's new hotel, costing about $200,000 for erection, and run on the temperance plan. A little farther along Market street is the Opera House and Masonic Hall, built by the Masonic fraternity at a cost of about $200,000. Near this point, at Ninth and West streets, is the Grace Methodist Episcopal Church, one of the handsomest Methodist churches in the country. These buildings are pointed out to the visitor by the younger Wilmingtonians as indications of what the new and larger Wilming. ton of coming years will be. At Tenth and Market the new academy recently built by J. C. Harkness, for educational purposes is worthy of notice. Further along on the same street is the palatial-looking residence of Colonel Henry McComb. It was a quiet Southern-looking house previous to the war, but is now, as are the more public buildings just mentioned, a clear indication of the incoming of the Northern spirit into this once modest little Quaker town. In the Along Delaware avenue, the mansions of Job H. Jackson and of Henry L. Tatnall represent the lavish modern spirit again, while a little beyond them, opposite the cemetery, are more fine old residences of the times gone by. Still further out the avenue, CLAYTON HOUSE. a superb brownstone mansion, built by Mr. Hollingsworth for a private residence, is now occupied by the Catholics for a first-class academy. In the same locality, a little down toward the Brandywine, is a solid-looking brick structure known as Heald's Hygeian Home, Drs. Pusey and Mary H. Heald, proprietors. The entire place has a look of health and an atmosphere of pure air about it and the living is delicious enough for the gods, and particularly blessed for all those persons given to weak, that is abused and hence unhealthy stomachs. It is the most progressive and Northern of all the institutions of the new Wilmington. Toward the suburbs of the city on Delaware avenue, there are some very rich and beautiful modern dwellings, notable among which is the house built a few years ago by Mr. J. T. Heald, one of Wilmington's best and most enterprising men, but now owned and occupied by Mr. Washington Jones, another public-spirited and leading citizen of Wilmington. Along the Brandywine, in addition to the mills already described, are Jessup & Moore's Paper Mills, Bancroft's Woolen Mills, Dupont's Powder Mills, and others less noted, all mingling their practical humdrum of daily life with the nameless beauties of this delightful river. Among other leading industries of Wilmington, may be mentioned the thriving morocco factories servedly receive a special description at our hands. They are all first-class, excelled by no similar establishments in the country, and they all indicate on what sure bases the future growth and prosperity of Wilmington are founded. Among the newer ventures of the city should be mentioned the Wilmington and Western Railroad, begun in 1871. It was well conceived, and the beginnings of it were executed with promptness and apparent success, but the undertaking was probably a little premature for the size and relative locality of the city, and though it will eventually be of benefit to of Messrs. Pusey, Scott & Co., also that of Mr. Washington Jones, already referred to; the immense ship-yards of Pusey, Jones & Co., and Messrs. McLear & Kendall's Coach Manufactory. As long ago as the year 1825, when the gallant French-American patriot Lafayette was the guest of Eleuthère Irenée Dupont, the founder of the famous powder mills, was so impressed with the change of the intervening years since he had before been hereabout, that he wrote in the "Album" of his host's daughter: "After having seen, nearly half a century ago, the bank of the Brandywine a scene of bloody fighting, I am happy now to find it the seat of industry, beauty and mutual friendship. JULY 25, 1825. LAFAYETTE." Would the limits of this notice permit, the business enterprises mentioned might each de Wilmington, many persons earnestly interested therein lost heavily by the undertaking. The Wilmington and Western Road cross Christine River in the suburbs, then follows th valley of Redclay Creek, past all its mills and local improvements, seads visitors to Brandywi Springs, and passes the birthplace of the invent Oliver Evans, while its contemplated extension will pass it close to the birthplace of Robert Fulton, in the Peachbottom slate region of Pennsylvania. No bad omen for a steam-road, to have had its ground first broken at the cradle of or steam inventor and to lead to the cradle o. another! It is all a part of the new spirit that is shaping the little Christinaham of two hundred years ago into one of the great and beautiful American cities of the future. Gent". THEN AND NOW--THE ORIGIN OF THE AMERICAN FLAG-THE BATTLE OF MUD ISLAND. BY JOHN C. CONYBEARE.1 Mount Vernon Octob' 6th 1773. The Conybeares have held a distinguished rank in Eng land in the field of letters, more especially in theology, for bout a century and a half. The "Episcopal great-grandlather" of the contributor of the accompanying valuable mementoes of a century ago, alluded to by him on page 90, was named John Conybeare, was born in 1692 near Exeter; educated at Exeter College, and having entered the Church, he arose by steady preferments to the high ecclesiastical dignity of Bishop of Bristol. His "Defence of Revealed Religion," ordered by Washington in the accompanying letter, was extremely popular, and three editions were demanded within a year; Bishop Warburton pronounced it one of the best reasoned books in the world." This was his principal work. I send to PoTTER'S AMERICAN MONTHLY, the American Historical periodical, the above copy of an unpublished letter of Washington, because it seems to me likely to prove especially interesting to its readers at a time when the Centennial Exhibition has been displaying to crowds, congregated from the Old World as well as from the New, the vast agricultural and mineral resources, and the brilliant manufacturing triumphs of the great and greatly-growing Republic, and when, as I learnt from an article in the New York Tribune of the 29th of June, "the Ensign of the Republic" and its origin was discussed with unusual interest. Nothing can more strikingly bring home to those who contemplated the industrial marvels of the Centennial Exhibition the wonderful progress which the United States have, in the last one hundred years, made in manufactures and wealth, than the fact, shown by this letter of the Father of his Country, that one of the most business-like dwellers in the "Old Dominion," then one of the wealthiest and most advanced of the American colonies, if not the wealthiest and most advanced of them, had to send to London or Bristol to procure nails, locks, glass, putty and other ordinary materials needed for the repairs of his Virginia home, Mount Vernon. to Mr. Robert Carey the tobacco from her Virginia estates, and to order through him books and other things required for his stepson and ward, young Mr. Custis, to whose separate account Washington in his present letter directs Mr. Carey to debit the books ordered, as it was incumbent on him as guardian and administrator of his stepson's property to account to the General Court of Virginia for all sums expended from the minor's income, for books or other educational require ments. MUD ISLAND, Fac-Simile of a Drawing made by Colonel books so ordered for his use in the close of the year 1773. Before the books could have been twelve months in his hands England's American colonies were banding themselves together to resist the ill-judged exactions of the English government, and young Custis was called away from peacefully studying the English Bishop's defence of "the Christian Religion" to join in the defence of American rights against illadvised English oppression, and to act as an aidde-camp to his stepfather, who, in 1775, was appointed General and Commander-in-Chief of manship, tell us a good deal more than this. the army of independence. Young Mr. Custis When the letter first came into my possession, was present at "Headquarters, New York," when, several years since, I found the broken halves of in October, 1781, the war of independence was the divided seal attached to the two edges of virtually brought to a close by the capitulation of the letter. Having cut them off, placed them. the British army under Lord Cornwallis, caught together and mounted them on card-board, I found in them the answer to a question which I had often asked, but always asked in vain, of American friends, how the Stars and Stripes came to be adopted as the American flag. I had on that broken seal the Washington arms before me, arms which are still to be found in monuments of the Washington family in a Northamptonshire parish where a branch of the family, long since extinct in England, resided some two centuries ago, and looking at the armorial bearings on that seal, alternate stripes of red and white, with three five-pointed |