Excerpt from The Quaker Soldier, or the British in Philadelphia: An Historical NovelPhiladelphia is but one of many great cities which have kept even pace until a civic cluster has grown up, the like nowhere else seen now, nor ever, except in the Magna Grascia of Ancient Italy. Where else -in what single nation of modern times - do we find four such cities as Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston, in such close proximity? France has her Paris, but where are her three other cities comparable to ours? Austria has her Vienna, but what else? Even England has no second city to contest the palm with the second of our glorious galaxy.The rise of our great cities is but one chapter. A lifetime ago reaches beyond the birth of the Great Republic. Within that brief period - that single point on the surface of history-a great power has grown up, indisputably Of the first class among the nations of the earth. Men have witnessed great em pires formed gradually, like Rome and Russia, or rapidly, like Alexander's, Genghis Khan's, and Na poleon's, but they were the gathering under one government of nations already in being, without any real increase of resources, and Often with a loss. Ours is a new creation, not a mere concentration, ours is a new power, created out of the raw material of national greatness. Where else does a single lifetime cover similar grand results?About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.