riage; the night of Miss Wright's lecture, when I
stayed to the end, I saw one. This darkness, this stillness, is
so great, that I almost felt it awful. As we walked home one
fine moonlight evening from the Chestnut Street house, we stopped
a moment before the United States Bank, to look at its white
marble columns by the subdued lights said to be so advantageous
to them; the building did, indeed, look beautiful; the
incongruous objects around were hardly visible, while the
brilliant white of the building, which by daylight is dazzling,
was mellowed into fainter light and softer shadow.

While pausing before this modern temple of Theseus, we remarked
that we alone seemed alive in this great city; it was ten
o'clock, and a most lovely cool evening, after a burning day, yet
all was silence. Regent Street, Bond Street, with their blaze of
gas-light _bijouterie_, and still more the Italian Boulevard of
Paris, rose in strong contrast on the memory; the light, which
outshines that of day--the gay, graceful, laughing throng--the
elegant saloons of Tortoni, with all their varieties of cooling
nectar--were all remembered. Is it an European prejudice to deem
that the solitary dram swallowed by the gentlemen on quitting an
American theatre indicates a lower and more vicious state of
manners, than do the ices so sedulously offered to the ladies on
leaving a French one?

The museum contains a good collection of objects illustrative of
natural history, and some very interesting specimens of Indian
antiquities; both here and at Cincinnati I saw so many things
resembling Egyptian relics, that I should like to see the origin
of the Indian nations enquired into, more accurately than has yet
been done.

The shops, of which there appeared to me to be an unusually large
proportion, are very handsome; many of them in a style of
European elegance. Lottery offices abound, and that species of
gambling is carried to a great extent. I saw fewer carriages in
Philadelphia than either at Baltimore or Washington, but in the
winter I was told they were more numerous.

Many of the best families had left the city for different
watering-places, and others were daily following. Long Branch is
a fashionable bathing place on the Jersey shore, to which many
resort, both from this place and from New York; the description
given of the manner of bathing appeared to me rather
extraordinary, but the account was confirmed by so many different
pe