capital. Where population increases rapidly rents are necessarily
high; and a good house in Philadelphia costs about as much, independent
of taxation, as a dwelling of the same class in London.

Besides the great market, which gives its name to the dividing line of
the city, and runs through its whole breadth, there are several others,
less extensive perhaps, but all alike under cover, well adapted to the
purpose, and boasting a due proportion of the abundance of good things,
which, profusely displayed on all sides, give ready evidence of the
agricultural wealth of the neighbourhood.

Numbers of the best market-farmers for vegetables, poultry, butter, &c.
are Germans, who, although most earnest in enriching the country by
their labour, yet cling with strange tenacity to the customs and
language of "Fader-land." Their costume and manner yet continues as
distinct and recognizable as was the appearance of their progenitors on
landing here some eighty years back, for the colony from which they are
chiefly derived had existence about the middle of the eighteenth
century; and many of these men, yet speaking no word of English, are of
the third generation. They have German magistrates, an interpreter in
courts when they act as jurors, German newspapers, &c.; and are the
stoutest, if not the promptest, asserters of democracy.

They are usually found a little in arrear on the subject of all passing
events; and at election times, or on occasions of extraordinary stir,
when a man is striving to render them _au courant_ with late
occurrences, they will now and then interrupt their informant with, "Bud
why de teufel doesn't Vashington come down to de Nord and bud it all to
rights?"

The public buildings are here of a more ambitious style of architecture
than any of the other cities can boast, and some of them are built in
exceeding good taste; but the one which had most interest in my eyes was
the old State-house, wherein the "Declaration of Independence" was
signed. The Senate-chamber is, I fancy, little changed since that
period; and contained, when I was last within it, models for various
public works: amongst others, several for a heroic statue of Washington,
about to be erected, somewhat late in the day to be sure, by the city;
others for the new college, now building, according to the will of the
late S. Girard, and intended to assist in perpetuating his name and
wealth to all posterity.

Such appears to have been the gr