No sooner did the letter arrive which decided this, than we began our preparations for departure.  We took our last voyage on the Potomac, we bade a last farewell to Virginia, and gave a last day to some of our kind friends near Washington.

The spring, though slow and backward, was sufficiently advanced to render the journey pleasant; and though the road from Washington to Baltimore was less brilliant in foliage than when I had seen it before, it still had much of beauty.  The azalias were in full bloom, and the delicate yellow blossom of the sassafras almost rivalled its fruit in beauty.

At Baltimore we again embarked on a gigantic steam-boat, and reached Philadelphia in the middle of the night.  Here we changed our boat and found time, before starting in the morning, to take a last look at the Doric and Corinthian porticos of the two celebrated temples dedicated to Mammon.

The Delaware river, above Philadelphia, still flows through a landscape too level for beauty, but it is rendered interesting by a succession of gentlemen’s seats, which, if less elaborately finished in architecture, and garden grounds, than the lovely villas on the Thames, are still beautiful objects to gaze upon as you float rapidly past on the broad silvery stream that washes their lawns They present a picture of wealth and enjoyment that accords well with the noble city to which they are an appendage.  One mansion arrested our attention, not only from its being more than usually large and splendid, but from its having the monument which marked the family resting-place, rearing itself in all the gloomy grandeur of black and white marble, exactly opposite the door of entrance.

In Virginia and Maryland we had remarked that almost every family mansion had its little grave yard, sheltered by locust and cypress trees; but this decorated dwelling of the dead seemed rather a melancholy ornament in the grounds.

We had, for a considerable distance, a view of the dwelling of Joseph Bonaparte, which is situated on the New Jersey shore, in the midst of an extensive tract of land, of which he is the proprietor.

Here the ex-monarch has built several houses, which are occupied by French tenants.  The country is very flat, but a terrace of two sides has been raised, commanding a fine reach of the Delaware River; at the point where this terrace forms a right angle, a lofty chapel has been erected, which looks very much like an observatory; I admired the ingenuity with which the Catholic prince has united his religion and his love of a fine terrestrial prospect.  The highest part of the building presents, in every direction, the appearance of an immense cross; the transept, if I may so express it, being formed by the projection of an ample balcony, which surrounds a tower.  A Quaker gentleman, from Philadelphia, exclaimed, as he gazed on the mansion, “There we see a monument of fallen royalty!  Strange! that dethroned kings should seek and find their best strong-hold in a Republic.”