This is one of those chaste and beautiful buildings which have given the public architecture of Philadelphia a superiority over that of every other city of our country. It needs but that its fair marble should be weather-fretted and stained, to express perfectly to the eye the model of one of the most graceful temples of antiquity. The severe simplicity of taste which breathes through this Greek model, however, is not adapted to private buildings; and in a certain kind of simplicity, or rather of want of ornament, lies the fault found by every eye in the domestic architecture of this city. The chess-board regularity of the streets, so embarrassing to a stranger, as well as tiresome to the gaze, require a more varied, if not a more ornate style. The hundreds of houses that resemble each other in every distinguishable particular, occasion a bewilderment and fatigue to the unaccustomed eye, which a citizen of Philadelphia can scarcely comprehend. The uniformity and plainness which William Penn has bequeathed in such an abiding legacy to Philadelphia, however, is seen but by a faint _penumbra_ in the dress of the inhabitants, or in their equipages, style of living, and costliness of furniture and entertainment. A faint shadow of original simplicity there still certainly exists, visible through all the departures from the spirit of Quakerism; and it is a leaven of taste and elegance in the ferment of luxury which has given Philadelphia emphatically a character for refinement. A more delightful temper and tone of society, a more enjoyable state of the exercise and mode of hospitality, or a more comfortable metropolis to live in, certainly does not exist this side the water. A European would prefer Philadelphia to every other residence in the United States. Is it possible to realize, that, on the site of this refined capital, only a hundred and fifty years ago, lived a people in such strong contrast to the above, (save only in hospitality,) as are described by William Penn in the following terms!— “The natives I shall consider in their persons, language, manners, religion, and government, with my sense of their original. For their persons, they are generally tall, straight, well-built, and of singular proportion; they tread strong and clever, and mostly walk with a lofty chin. Of complexion, black, but by design, as the gypsies in England: they grease themselves with bear’s fat, clarified; and using no defence against sun or weather, their skins must needs be swarthy. Their eye is little and black, not unlike a straight-looked Jew. The thick lip and flat nose, so frequent with the East Indians and Blacks, are not common to them; many of them have fine Roman noses.