By a slight inspection of the plan, you will perceive the great regularity observed in laying out this city; the streets intersect each other at right angles, the centre street, north and south, is 113 feet wide; that east and west 100 feet; and the other principal streets 50 feet wide.  Had equal care been taken to build the houses uniformly, and their height in proportion to the width of the streets, this city would have been uncommonly beautiful; but except that the fronts of the buildings were not permitted to extend beyond the line laid down in the plan, every man built his house (to use the language of the first settlers,) “as it seemed good in his own eyes.”

The first object of an industrious emigrant, who means to settle in Philadelphia, is to purchase a lot of ground in one of the vacant streets.  He erects a small building forty or fifty feet from the line laid out for him by the city surveyor, and lives there till he can afford to build a house; when his former habitation serves him for a kitchen and wash-house.  I have observed buildings in this state in the heart of the city; but they are more common in the outskirts.  Our friend Wright is exactly in this situation; but I am afraid it will be many years before he will be able to build in front.

The buildings in this city are about two thirds of brick, and the rest of wood.  The foundations of the former are in general of a species of marble; the bricks are uncommonly well manufactured; and these buildings are more firmly constructed than in Europe.  Those of wood are the reverse, which you will easily credit, when I inform you, that when a house of this description is offered for sale, it is by no means understood, as in England, that the land on which it stands is included in the purchase.  They have a method of removing these buildings entire.  A house travelling in this manner through the streets of the city is to a European a truly grotesque and extraordinary sight.

During the time the British troops had possession of this city in the last war, they were much distressed for fuel, and obliged to cut down all the wood they could meet with; upwards of a thousand acres of peach and apple orchard were destroyed, belonging to one family.  This destruction of the trees has materially hurt the prospects for three or four miles on the Pensylvania side; the opposite Jersey shore (except the plantations) is one entire forest.

Philadelphia is at present supplied with water from pumps, placed in different parts of the city; but a company of adventurers are bringing water from above the falls of Scuylkill, in the manner of the New River in London:  but mean to improve on sir Hugh Middleton’s plan, by making their aqueduct also serve the purposes of inland navigation.

The inhabitants are in general very fond of theatrical representations; their new theatre is an elegant building, from a design the subscribers obtained from London, where the principal scenes were painted by Richardson and Rooker.  The receipts of the house have exceeded one thousand six hundred dollars.