- STYLE REMARKS ON THE PECULIARITIES IN CONDUCT OF THE FIRST AMERICAN CONGRESS. -ANEC- VANIA. MY DEAR FRIEND, Philadelphia, May, 1819. I SHALL not fatigue you with the enumeration and description of the public edifices and institu-tions of this city. Innumerable travellers, however unwilling to see beauty and good order in the moral and political frame of American society, bear ample testimony to the peaceable virtues and active benevolence of the people of Philadelphia. * *Mr. Fearon indeed says, Although the eyes and ears of a stranger are not insulted in the openness of noon-day with evidence of hardened profligacy, I have nevertheless reason to believe in its existence to a very great extent." Whoever this Mr. Fearon may be, or whatever may have been his motive for travelling through the United States, it is not by such vague insinuations that the character of the moral and truly Christian city of Philadelphia can be brought into discredit either in America or Europe. It had been wise, however, if this writer had always kept to these general terms, and not ventured upon false facts. I refer you to Lieutenant Hall* for an accurate and interesting description of the state-prison, an object which must attract the attention of every foreigner. Let me, by-the-bye, distinguish from the mass of travellers who have disfigured this country, that intelligent officer; not that I am always disposed to think or feel with him in his observations upon this nation; I incline to think that he has not always done justice either to their character or their manners. The same objects often appear so differently to two different pair of eyes, though both should be equally intent upon seeing them as they are, that one might readily be tempted to turn Pyrrhonist, and call in doubt, not only the sanity of one's judgment, but the evidence of one's senses. The fact is, that though we should even be disburdened of national and individual prejudice, there will yet remain in our constitutional temper, or certain fortuitous circumstances of wind or weather, a dull companion, exhausted spirits, wearied limbs, or some one of the thousand nameless accidents to whose influence we frail mortals are so miserably subjected, enough to jaundice our eye-sight and pervert our feelings. A traveller is, of all men, most at the mercy of these nameless trifles; it is a pity however, that nations should be laid at their mercy too, or rather at the mercy of a jaded traveller's distempered mind. Would it not be a * Travels in Canada and the United States, by Lieutenant Hall, 14th Light Dragoons. good rule, that when a tourist sits down with pen and paper before him to pass judgment upon the world around him, he should first ask himself a few questions: "Am I in good health and good humour? in a comfortable room and an easy chair? at peace with myself and all men about me?" I have a notion that some such short catechism would save volumes of mis-stated facts and misrepresented characters, and keep the peace not only between man and man, but nation and nation, in a manner undesired by statesmen, and undreamed-of by philosophers. I mean not exactly to apply this to Lieutenant Hall, whose remarks in general do as much honour to his heart as his head; it strikes me only that he has sometimes judged hastily, or perhaps I think so because I incline to judge differently. I have mentioned with how much pleasure I found your name remembered in some houses of this city; of course, more particularly in that of the family of the late Dr. Rush. I much regret that this venerable philanthropist should have sunk beneath the weight of years before our visit to this country. It makes even the young pause to ruminate on the swift wings of time, when they find the path of life forsaken by those whom the heart has been taught to venerate. There would, indeed, be much in this city to mark the lapse of years, were not this somewhat checked by the reflection that years, in their effects, count for ages G in this young and vigorous world. Washington, Hamilton, Gates, and all the older veterans of the Revolution, who yet trod the stage when you surveyed it, are all gathered to their fathers; and though their names are still fresh in men's mouths, could they now look up from their graves, they might scarcely know their own America. It is curious to picture the Philadelphia into which the young Franklin threw himself, friendless and pennyless, to seek his fortune, and the Philadelphia that now is-we may say, too, the Philadelphia that he left it, when he sunk, full of years and honor, into the grave. From a small provincial town, without public libraries or institutions of any kind, he lived to see it not only the thriving, populous, and well-endowed capital of an independent state, but the seat of a government, the novelty of whose principles fixed the eyes of the whole civilized world. It has now all the appearance of a wealthy and beautiful metropolis, though it has lost the interest which it possessed to you as the seat and centre of political life. Not merely has it ceased to be the seat of the great central government, as it was when you knew it, but even of that of the Pennsylvania republic. The legislature now meets in Lancaster, about 60 miles west from hence, but this also has already grown out of the centre of the fastspreading circle of population; and, by an act of the Assembly, the capital is ordained to travel yet farther west to Harrisburgh, on the east branch of the Susquehanna. This town, the definitive seat of the Pennsylvania state-government, is, I am informed, laid out with great care, much on the same plan as Philadelphia, and promises, in the grandeur of its public buildings, to outstrip the parent city. I never walked through the streets of any city with so much satisfaction as those of Philadelphia. The neatness and cleanliness of all animate and inanimate things, houses, pavements, and citizens, is not to be surpassed. It has not, indeed, the commanding position of New York, which gives to that city an air of beauty and grandeur very imposing to a stranger, but it has more the appearance of a finished and long-established metropolis. I am not sure that the streets have not too many right angles and straight lines to be altogether pleasing to the eye, but they have so much the air of cheerfulness, cleanliness, and comfort, that it would be quite absurd to find fault with them. The side pavements are regularly washed every morning by the domestics of each house, a piece of out-door housewifery, by the way, which must be somewhat mischievous to the ladies' thin slippers, but which adds much to the fair appearance, and, I doubt not, to the good health of the city. The brick walls, as well as framework of the houses, are painted yearly. The doors are usually white, and kept delicately clean, which, |