I made acquaintance with a bewitching Newfoundland puppy, whom I greatly coveted. Came home, dressed, and breakfasted. After breakfast, righted my things, and wrote journal. Took a walk with my father through some of the principal streets. The town is perfect silence and solitude, compared with New York; there is a greater air of age about it too, which pleases me. The red houses are not so fiercely red, nor the white facings so glaringly white; in short, it has not so new and flaunting a look, which is a great recommendation to me. The city is regularly built, the streets intersecting each other at right angles. We passed one or two pretty buildings in pure white marble, and the Bank in Chestnut Street, which is a beautiful little copy of the Parthenon. The pure, cold, clear-looking marble suits well with the severe and unadorned style of architecture; and is in harmony, too, with the extreme brilliancy of the sky, and clearness of the atmosphere of this country.[34] We passed another larger building, also a bank, in the Corinthian style, which did not please me so much. The shops here are much better looking than those at New York: the windows are larger, and more advantageously constructed for the display of goods; and there did not appear to be the same anomalous mixture of vendibles, as in the New York shops. The streets were very full of men hurrying to the town-house, to give their votes. It is election time, and much excitement subsists with regard to the choice of the future President.[35] The democrats or radicals are for the re-election of General Jackson, but the aristocratic party, which here at all events is the strongest, are in favour of Henry Clay. Here is the usual quantity of shouting and breaking windows that we are accustomed to on these occasions. I saw a caricature of Jackson and Van Buren, his chief supporter, which was entitled "The King and his Minister." Van Buren held a crown in his hand, and the devil was approaching Jackson with a sceptre.--Came in at half-past four, dressed for dinner: they gave us an excellent one. The master of this house was, it seems, once a man of independent fortune, and a great _bon vivant_. He has retained from thence a fellow-feeling for his guests, and does by them as he would be done by. After dinner, worked till tea-time; after tea, wrote journal, and now I'll go to bed. We are attended here by a fat old lively negro, by name Henry, who canters about in our behalf with great alacrity, and seems wrapt in much wonderment at many of our proceedings. By the by, the black who protected our baggage from the steam-boat was ycleped _Oliver Cromwell_. I have begun Grahame's History of America, and like it "mainly," as the old plays say. _Wednesday, 10th._