My first visit, at an early hour on Monday morning, was to the banks of the Monongahela, which ran by the bottom of the main street, wherein I was lodged. The water was at this time low, being fifteen feet under its highest level: the point of junction with the Alleghany lay, as I discovered, some way below. The opposite heights, which rise boldly from the water's edge, looked dark and drear enough, covered as they are with a stubble of blackened stumps, and a few blasted trees, the ghosts of the ruined forest. The political economist, however, would find ready consolation in the mounds of coal-dust, the dingy low-roofed buildings, together with the swinging of a hundred cranks, worked by the engines whose smoke is seen curling along the face of the steep hill. It is to give place to these iron giants that the forest has been felled; and to supply these with fire, the mountain is in this direction pierced to its centre. Nature has supplied this place with wharves; and the people appear quite contented with her handiwork, for they are left as she made them. I counted fourteen steamboats all busied in taking in or discharging freight; and the river was here and there dotted by keels of a rude, picturesque construction: everything, indeed, gave evidence of active and prosperous trade. I from hence made a circuit of the principal part of the town, which is soon accomplished, for it offers nothing externally to arrest the passer-by for a moment: the streets are narrow, irregular, and ill-paved; the houses as dirty as the smoke of bituminous coal can make them, and, though substantially built, are in general wholly destitute of neatness or ornament. Upon Grant's Hill, a spur of one of the surrounding heights, that thrusts itself boldly into the heart of the delta on which the town is built, I found a Gothic edifice almost completed, the magnitude and tasteful design of which attracted me: I entered it, and perceived at once that it was a place of Catholic worship. From a communicative little man, whom I observed for some time eyeing me with a sociable look, I learnt that this was the cathedral; and it stands a pleasing memorial of the liberality of the sects of this town, having been raised by voluntary subscriptions made among the numerous congregations of the place. It is a grateful task to record such evidences of the existence of true Christian charity; they reconcile one to one's fellows, and serve to balance the barbarous acts of bigotry and blindness which yet occasionally disgrace the age and degrade humanity. This edifice, when completed, will be an attractive object, both from its commanding site and the character of its architecture, which is of the florid Gothic, tastefully sustained throughout.