The great and most striking contrast between this city and those of Europe, is perceived after sunset; scarcely a sound is heard; hardly a voice or a wheel breaks the stillness.  The Streets are entirely dark, except where a stray lamp marks an hotel or the like; no shops are open, but those of the apothecary, and here and there a cook’s shop; scarcely a step is heard, and for a note of music, or the sound of mirth, I listened in vain.  In leaving the theatre, which I always did before the afterpiece, I saw not a single carriage; the night of Miss Wright’s lecture, when I stayed to the end, I saw one.  This darkness, this stillness, is so great, that I almost felt it awful.  As we walked home one fine moonlight evening from the Chestnut Street house, we stopped a moment before the United States Bank, to look at its white marble columns by the subdued lights said to be so advantageous to them; the building did, indeed, look beautiful; the incongruous objects around were hardly visible, while the brilliant white of the building, which by daylight is dazzling, was mellowed into fainter light and softer shadow.

While pausing before this modern temple of Theseus, we remarked that we alone seemed alive in this great city; it was ten o’clock, and a most lovely cool evening, after a burning day, yet all was silence.  Regent Street, Bond Street, with their blaze of gas-light bijouterie, and still more the Italian Boulevard of Paris, rose in strong contrast on the memory; the light, which outshines that of day—­the gay, graceful, laughing throng—­the elegant saloons of Tortoni, with all their varieties of cooling nectar—­were all remembered.  Is it an European prejudice to deem that the solitary dram swallowed by the gentlemen on quitting an American theatre indicates a lower and more vicious state of manners, than do the ices so sedulously offered to the ladies on leaving a French one?

The museum contains a good collection of objects illustrative of natural history, and some very interesting specimens of Indian antiquities; both here and at Cincinnati I saw so many things resembling Egyptian relics, that I should like to see the origin of the Indian nations enquired into, more accurately than has yet been done.

The shops, of which there appeared to me to be an unusually large proportion, are very handsome; many of them in a style of European elegance.  Lottery offices abound, and that species of gambling is carried to a great extent.  I saw fewer carriages in Philadelphia than either at Baltimore or Washington, but in the winter I was told they were more numerous.