portentous clock-tower which is to be raised to a height that shall dwarf all known steeples, campaniles or towers in the two hemispheres by many gratifying feet. To strangers, interesting and attractive, with many fine buildings and noble public institutions to show, Philadelphia is connected with the most important events in the early life of the Republic, and possesses for an American larger and more numerous souvenirs of the fathers of the Union and of their labours than any other place on the Continent. From some points in the park there is a good _coup d'oeil_ to be obtained of the monuments, churches, and undulating sea of roofs between the Schuylkill and the Delaware. The Girard Bridge, on the way, is one of the finest in the world. On every side there was much to admire, but the sun was blazing and fierce--unusually so--and at last we sought the shades of the Continental. There was none very soon after our arrival, for the hotel was, as I have said, illuminated by electricity. I could not recognise the place in which I had once stood in a time of wild excitement. "Sumter was to be relieved!" A throng of men discussing the news that was destined to lead to such stupendous results, so dense I could not make my way to the office where there was now only a crowd of some dozen people waiting to see "this Duke and the Britishers." The clerk, or one of those gentlemen in the office who control the destinies of travellers and visitors to hotels in the States, remembered the time well. He had served in a Pennsylvania regiment (not one of those which went away from McDowell the morning of Bull Run), and had been lieutenant, if not captain, and now, like many of his comrades in higher places, he was engaged in civil pursuits. Many interviews, and to bed.