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pensive beauty of its appearance. The houses are built of limestone:
they are all on a similar plan, and have their window-frames, doors, and
other wood-work, painted fawn-colour: before each house are planted
weeping willows, whose luxuriant shade seems to shut out worldly glare,
and throws an air of monastic repose over the whole village.

The _Lehigh Mountain_ is the last of the Allegheny Ridges; the country
is thenceforth level, fertile, and thickly inhabited, by steady Germans,
who wear broad hats, and purple breeches; and whose houses and villages
have the antique fashion of Flemish landscape. German is so generally
spoken here, that the newspapers and public notices are all printed in
that language.

The approach to Philadelphia is announced by a good turnpike road.
_German Town_ is a large suburb to the city, and the traveller here
feels himself within the precincts of a populous and long-established
capital.

_A Description of Philadelphia._

The first impressions, on entering this city, are decidedly favourable.
It possesses a character essentially different from that of New York. It
has not so much business, nor so much animation; but there is, in
Philadelphia, a freedom from mere display; an evidence of solidity, of
which its more commercial rival is nearly destitute.

All the _streets_ are spacious; the names of many of them, as Sassafras,
Chesnut, and Locust, record their sylvan origin: rows of Lombardy
poplars are planted in them. The private _houses_ are characterized by
elegant neatness; the steps and window-sills of many of them are of grey
marble, and they have large mats placed before the doors. The streets
are carefully swept, as well as the foot-paths, which are paved with
brick. The _shops_ do not yield, in display, to those of London. The
principal street is one hundred feet wide; and the others vary from
eighty to fifty. In the foot-paths a great inconvenience is experienced
by the injudicious mode in which cellars are constructed, the openings
of which project into the street; and also by the slovenly practice of
the store or shopkeepers placing great quantities of loose goods on the
outside of their doors.

Philadelphia stands on the bank of the river _Delaware_; and, in 1795,
when Mr. Weld was there, its appearance, as approached from the water,
was not very prepossessing. Nothing was visible but confused heaps of
wooden store-houses, crowded upon each other, and wharfs, which
pro