THE ROCK-TOMB OF BRADORE




THE PENNSYLVANIA PILGRIM.

INTRODUCTORY NOTE.

THE beginning of German emigration to America may be traced to the
personal influence of William Penn, who in 1677 visited the Continent,
and made the acquaintance of an intelligent and highly cultivated circle
of Pietists, or Mystics, who, reviving in the seventeenth century the
spiritual faith and worship of Tauler and the "Friends of God" in the
fourteenth, gathered about the pastor Spener, and the young and
beautiful Eleonora Johanna Von Merlau. In this circle originated the
Frankfort Land Company, which bought of William Penn, the Governor of
Pennsylvania, a tract of land near the new city of Philadelphia. The
company's agent in the New World was a rising young lawyer, Francis
Daniel Pastorius, son of Judge Pastorius, of Windsheim, who, at the age
of seventeen, entered the University of Altorf. He studied law at,
Strasburg, Basle, and Jena, and at Ratisbon, the seat of the Imperial
Government, obtained a practical knowledge of international polity.
Successful in all his examinations and disputations, he received the
degree of Doctor of Law at Nuremberg in 1676. In 1679 he was a
law-lecturer at Frankfort, where he became deeply interested in the
teachings of Dr. Spener. In 1680-81 he travelled in France, England,
Ireland, and Italy with his friend Herr Von Rodeck. "I was," he says,
"glad to enjoy again the company of my Christian friends, rather than be
with Von Rodeck feasting and dancing." In 1683, in company with a small