at.  The United States, and Pennsylvania banks, are the most striking buildings, and are both extremely handsome, being of white marble, and built after Grecian models.  The State House has nothing externally to recommend it, but the room shown as that in which the declaration of independence was signed, and in which the estimable Lafayette was received half a century after he had shed his noble blood in aiding to obtain it, is an interesting spot.  At one end of this room is a statue in wood of General Washington; on its base is the following inscription:-

First in Peace, First in War, and First in the hearts of his Countrymen.

There is a very pretty enclosure before the Walnut Street entrance to the State House, with good well-kept gravel walks, and many of their beautiful flowering trees.  It is laid down in grass, not in turf; that, indeed, is a luxury I never saw in America.  Near this enclosure is another of much the same description, called Washington Square.  Here there was an excellent crop of clover; but as the trees are numerous, and highly beautiful, and several commodious seats are placed beneath their shade, it is, in spite of the long grass, a very agreeable retreat from heat and dust.  It was rarely, however, that I saw any of these seats occupied; the Americans have either no leisure, or no inclination for those moments of delassement that all other people, I believe, indulge in.  Even their drams, so universally taken by rich and poor, are swallowed standing, and, excepting at church, they never have the air of leisure or repose.  This pretty Washington Square is surrounded by houses on three sides, but (lasso!) has a prison on the fourth; it is nevertheless the nearest approach to a London square that is to be found in Philadelphia.

One evening, while the rest of my party went to visit some objects which I had before seen, I agreed to await their return in this square, and sat down under a magnificent catalpa, which threw its fragrant blossoms in all directions; the other end of the bench was occupied by a young lady, who was employed in watching the gambols of a little boy.  There was something in her manner of looking at me, and exchanging a smile when her young charge performed some extraordinary feat of activity on the grass, that persuaded me she was not an American.  I do not remember who spoke first, but we were presently in a full flow of conversation.  She spoke English with elegant correctness, but she was a German, and with an ardour of feeling which gave her a decidedly foreign air in Philadelphia, she talked to me of her country, of all she had left, and of all she had found, or rather of all she had not found, for thus ran her lament:-

“They do not love music.  Oh no! and they never amuse themselves—­no; and their hearts are not warm, at least they seem not so to strangers; and they have no ease, no forgetfulness of business and of care—­no, not for a moment.  But I will not stay long, I think, for I should not live.”  She told me that she had a brother settled there as a merchant, and that she had passed a year with him; but she was hoping soon to return to her father land.