commercial, architectural, and other respects, testing the truth, and proving the cost and value, of the political adage" Competition against monopoly."

10TH JANUARY.

I quitted the Quaker city with regret; and, furnished with letters of introduction to the big wigs at Washington, set out on my travels again, in a steamboat, from Callow Hill Wharf, to Wilmington, in Delaware, forty miles off, by water-twenty-seven, by land. The Delaware, which conveyed us the principal part of our route, is broad, but its banks are altogether flat and uninteresting.

The next day I proceeded in a curricle to Greenway, three miles from Wilmington, to call upon Mr. James Brindley, a native of Alton, who emigrated about 1792, when he was seven years old, with his father, a nephew to the celebrated engineer. He resides in a substantial two-storied house, built of free granite, and has 170 acres of freehold land, principally under the plough. He is a remarkably handsome man, in the prime of life, and I knew him and his two little girls at once, from their resemblance to their relations at Alton. In fact, I stopped

the driver at the garden-gate, on seeing his children there, knowing them immediately, from their resemblance to their Staffordshire relations.

He spoke of the rapidly rising state of the country, and said, that the only drawback he had—the only thing he longed for-was the sight of some of his Staffordshire relations; a permanent benefit which I had the pleasure to assist in procuring for him five or six years afterwards.

12TH JANUARY.-SATURDAY.

Being market-day at Wilmington, I left that city for Baltimore, eighty-six miles off; the first twentyone miles of it were overland to French-town, (on the Elk river, an arm of Chesapeak Bay, very commodious in the carrying trade between Baltimore and Philadelphia) the last sixty-five miles in two steamboats. A broad canal is in course of completion between Delaware and Chesapeak Bays, which will afford the greatest possible accommodation to the merchants trading between those cities.

The fog was so dense at ten, p. m., that the captain of the second steamer thought it prudent to anchor for the night, and one lady and thirty gentlemen

were, in consequence, accommodated with berths, as comfortable as possible.

Travelling in stages, and sailing and sleeping in steam-boats, appeared to me like the renovation of an antecedent mode of existence, combining at once the advantages of novelty, with the pleasures of memory. I ran over in my mind the names and number of all the steam-boats I had sailed in, since I came to America, with endless other circumstances of equal, greater, or less importance, until at length, I was numbered among the lumber that slumber. On the 13th, at half-past eight, a. m., we reached our destination at Baltimore, and I put up at Barnum's, the largest building there, as well as the largest hotel, in the United States. It is the property of a jointstock company, and Barnum pays them $6000 a-year rent, to increase $1000 a-year, until it amounts to $10,000.

Baltimore is the third city in the United States, for size and population, which exceeds 70,000. It has a unique and imposing appearance, and from its numerous domes, the variety of its steeples, and the massiveness of its public monuments, gives one the idea, rather of an Italian, or an Oriental, than of an

American city. Under these circumstances, the good people of New York and Philadelphia, somewhat sneeringly, I suspect, are wont to distinguish it by the appellation of the "Monumental City."

It derives its name from Lord Baltimore, a Roman Catholic, who, in 1632, procured a patent for the territory, now called Maryland, and immediately evinced the liberality of his sentiments, by proclaiming universal liberty of conscience to all denominations of Christians, who should settle in his colony.

It enjoyed a great carrying-trade during the course of Bonaparte's career; and, while the late war with England continued, was celebrated for schooners of a peculiar construction, which puzzled and baffled the British cruisers. They are built in the form of a wedge, and cut through the water with surprising swiftness.

The staples of Baltimore are flour and tobacco, which, growing in Maryland and Virginia, are exported here, to Germany, and Holland.

The public buildings are numerous and handsome; among them General Washington's and the Battle Monument, are very conspicuous. The first is a column of white marble, 170 feet high, placed in a command

ing situation, at the summit of a steep street, called Charles-street; it is fourteen feet in diameter at the top, and twenty feet at the bottom, with a base, twenty-three feet in height, and fifty feet square. It is only waiting for the full-length figure of the General, to surmount the whole, and render it complete.

The Battle Monument is near Barnum's hotel, and is seventy feet high; it consists of a scroll, worked upon a fluted marble wreath, encircling a pedestal, and containing the names of the citizens who fell in the battle with the British, off North Point, in 1814. It is an excellent and elaborate performance, the work of Copellano, an Italian artist.

The Roman Catholic cathedral is a modern granite building, of the Doric order, in the shape of a small cross, surmounted by a dome, built of bricks, and covered with cement, which, chipping off here and there, gives it a sordid and shabby appearance, detracting greatly from its real dignity: the style, strictly speaking, is of the Roman Doric, and the Baltimorians do say, that it was built after St. Peter's, at Rome, respecting which, there can be no doubt. Nevertheless, as it has already cost £100,000, there must be, and is, something to shew for the money.