they happened to combine the leisure to sit and a painter to sit to. When a statesman like Jefferson, who confessed himself "an enthusiast on the subject of the arts," was sent abroad, he devoted his scant leisure to securing the best possible sculptor for the statue of Washington, or the best possible models for public buildings at home. Much that we now prize in architectiure and design we owe to the men who supposed themselves too occupied with politics and war to encourage art and artists. They were not too busy to provide the beauty without which liberty would have been a poor affair—not too busy to welcome the first Americans who saw to it that all the beauty should not be imported from Europe. "After the first cares for the necessaries of life are over, we shall come to think of the embellishments," Franklin wrote to his London landlady's daughter. "Already some of our young geniuses begin to lisp attempts at painting, poetry and music. We have a young painter now studying at Rome."
In this care for the embellishments of life, of so much more real importance than the necessaries, Philadelphia was the first town to take the lead, though Philadelphians have since gone out of their way to forget it. The old Quaker lady in her beautiful dress, preserving her beautiful repose, in her beautiful old and historic rooms, shows the Friends' instinctive love of beauty even if they never intentionally, or deliberately, undertook to create it. For the most beautiful of what we now call Colonial furniture produced in the Colonies, Philadelphia is given the credit
