g pace necessarily attending
consultations, and arrangements across the Atlantic, our plans
were finally settled; the coming spring was to show us New York,
and Niagara, and the early summer was to convey us home.

No sooner did the letter arrive which decided this, than we began
our preparations for departure. We took our last voyage on the
Potomac, we bade a last farewell to Virginia, and gave a last day
to some of our kind friends near Washington.

The spring, though slow and backward, was sufficiently advanced
to render the journey pleasant; and though the road from
Washington to Baltimore was less brilliant in foliage than when
I had seen it before, it still had much of beauty. The azalias
were in full bloom, and the delicate yellow blossom of the
sassafras almost rivalled its fruit in beauty.

At Baltimore we again embarked on a gigantic steam-boat, and
reached Philadelphia in the middle of the night. Here we changed
our boat and found time, before starting in the morning, to take
a last look at the Doric and Corinthian porticos of the two
celebrated temples dedicated to Mammon.

The Delaware river, above Philadelphia, still flows through a
landscape too level for beauty, but it is rendered interesting by
a succession of gentlemen's seats, which, if less elaborately
finished in architecture, and garden grounds, than the lovely
villas on the Thames, are still beautiful objects to gaze upon as
you float rapidly past on the broad silvery stream that washes
their lawns They present a picture of wealth and enjoyment that
accords well with the noble city to which they are an appendage.
One mansion arrested our attention, not only from its being more
than usually large and splendid, but from its having the monument
which marked the family resting-place, rearing itself in all the
gloomy grandeur of black and white marble, exactly opposite the
door of entrance.

In Virginia and Maryland we had remarked that almost every family
mansion had its little grave yard, sheltered by locust and
cypress trees; but this decorated dwelling of the dead seemed
rather a melancholy ornament in the grounds.

We had, for a considerable distance, a view of the dwelling of
Joseph Bonaparte, which is situated on the New Jersey shore, in
the midst of an extensive tract of land, of which he is the
proprietor.

Here the ex-monarch has built several houses, which are occupied
by French tenants. The country is very flat, but a terrace