gave permission for its publication. It is an invitation to the muses to visit these lands:

"Haste lovely nymphs, and quickly come away,
Our sylvan gods lament your long delay;
The stately oaks that dwell on Delaware
Rear their tall heads to view you from afar.
The Naiads summon all their sealy crew
And at Henlopen anxious wait for you.

But hark, they come! The Dryads crowd the shore,
The waters rise, I hear the billows roar!
Hoarse Delaware the joyful tidings brings,
And all his swans, transported, clap their wings."

The author's apologetic introduction of these enthusiastic verses to the editor is worth preserving:

"As this poetical brat was conceived in North America, you may, if you please, suffer it to give its first squeak in the world through the channel of the American Magazine. But if it should appear of a monstrous nature, stifle the wretch by all means in the birth, and throw it into the river Delaware, from whence, you will observe, it originally sprung. The parent, I can assure you, will shed no tears at the funeral. If Saturn presided at its formation instead of Apollo, it will want no lead to make it sink, but fall quickly to the bottom by its own natural heaviness, as I doubt not many other modern productions, both in prose and verse,

('Sinking from thought to thought—a vast profound')

would have done, had they been put to the trial."

The last of Sterling's contributions to the American Magazine was an "Epitaph on the late Lord Howe:"

Patriots and chiefs! Britannia's mighty dead,
Whose wisdom counsel'd, and whose valor bled,
With gratulations, 'midst your radiant host,
Receive to glory Howe's heroic ghost;
Who self severe, in Honor's cause expir'd,
By native worth and your example fir'd,
In foreign fields, like Sidney, young and brave,
Doom'd to an early not untimely grave.
Death flew commission'd by celestial love,
And, scourging earth, improv'd the joys above.

Impassive to low pleasure's baneful charm,
Inur'd to gen'rous toils, and nerv'd for arms,
He saw, indignant, our worst foes advance
With strides gigantic—Luxury and France!
A martial spirit emulous to raise,
He fought, as soldiers fought, in Marlbro's days.
His country call'd—the noble talents given,
'Twas his t'exert—success belonged to heaven!
High o'er his standard and the crimson shore
Plum'd victory hover'd, till he breathed no more.
'Midst piles of slaughter'd foes—"French slaves, he cry'd,"
"My Britons will revenge"—then smil'd and dy'd!

The unknown annotator of the British Museum copy writes against these lines, "I cannot yet learn who was the author of this noble epitaph." But it is clearly by Sterling. In the letter that accompanies the poem he writes: "Please to know that the grandfather of the late Lord Howe, when in a high employment in the reign of Queen Anne, was a generous patron to the father of the author of these lines, by presenting to her Majesty a memorial of his long services in the wars of Ireland, Spain and Flanders, and by farther promoting his pretensions to an honourable post in the army, of which he would have been deprived by a court-interest in favour of a younger and unexperienced officer." This letter is written from Maryland. It corresponds with all that we know of Sterling's life. His gratitude was unfailing to those who had helped the advancement of his father. In his dedication of "The Rival Generals" (London, 1722), Sterling, addressing himself to William Conolly, Lord Justice of Ireland, wrote: "Nor can I omit this occasion of testifying my gratitude to your Excellency, who so generously contributed, in the First Session of this Parliament, to do my Father that Justice in his Pretensions which was deny'd him in a late reign."

In July, 1758, The American Magazine published James Logan's letters to Edmund Halley establishing Thomas Godfrey's claim to the invention of "Hadley's quadrant." Thomas Godfrey, a glazier by trade, was one of the original members of Franklin's "Junto," and boarded in Franklin's house on High Street. He was born in Bristol, Pa., in 1704. While working for James Logan, at Stenton, he accidentally discovered the principle upon which he constructed his improvement upon Davis's quadrant. The new instrument was first used in Delaware Bay by Joshua Fisher, of Lewes. "Mr. Godfrey then sent the instrument to be tried at sea by an acquaintance of his, an ingenious navigator, in a voyage to Jamaica, who showed it to a captain of a ship there just going for England, by which means it came to the knowledge of Mr. Hadley" (American Magazine, p. 476). The Royal Society of England, after hearing James Logan's communication, decided that both Godfrey and Hadley were entitled to the honor of the invention, and sent to Godfrey household goods to the value of two hundred dollars.

In spite of the clearest facts and undoubted dates, the quadrant is still persistently miscalled by the name of its English appropriator.[3]

"Junius" is the signature to a neat poem called "The Invitation" in the American Magazine for January, 1758, and appended to it is the following editorial note: "This little poem was sent to us by an unknown hand, and seems dated as an original. If it be so, we think it does honor to our city; but of this we are not certain. All we can say is that we do not recollect to have seen it before." This poem, which William Smith thought to be an honor to Philadelphia, was the composition of Thomas Godfrey the younger, then a youth of twenty-one years. Editorial encouragement won from him an "Ode on Friendship" in August, and an "Ode on Wine" in September. Young Godfrey was apprenticed to a watchmaker, but through the friendly influence of the Provost of the College he obtained a lieutenant's commission in the provincial forces raised against Fort Du Quesne. He died of fever when only twenty-seven years of age, and his poems, with an "account of T. Godfrey," were published by Nathaniel Evans in 1767.

Nathaniel Evans knits together, in a manner, this American Magazine and the Port Folio, as he was the biographer of Godfrey, who was a contributor to the former, and the Petrarch-lover of Elizabeth Graeme or Mrs. Ferguson, a helper of the latter. That he was hopeful of his city's future is evident from the following prophecy, which makes a part of his "Ode on the Prospect of Peace," 1761:

"To such may Delaware, majestic