Oakland Farm was not on a public road, and it was some miles remote from the route of any public conveyance. As the season was the close of spring, and the weather delightful, Lindsay determined to go thither on a fine horse that he had recently purchased; taking with him only a small valise, it being his intention to remain there but a few days. He set out in the afternoon, and passed the night at a tavern about ten miles from the city, formerly known as the Black Bear, but now dignified with the title of the Pennsylvania Hotel, expressed in immense gilt letters on a blue board above the door. Lindsay felt something like regret at the ejectment of his old acquaintance Bruin, who, proclaiming "Entertainment for Man and Horse," had swung so many years on a lofty sign-post under the shade of a great buttonwood tree, now cut down to make room for four slender Lombardy poplars, which, though out of favour in the city, had become fashionable in the country. We will pass over many other changes which our hero observed about the new-modelled inn, and accompany him as he pursued his way along the road which had been so familiar to him in his early youth, and which, though it retained many of its original features, had partaken greatly of the all-pervading spirit of improvement. The hills were still there. The beautiful creek, which in England would have been termed a river, meandered everywhere just as before, wide, clear, and deep; but its rude log bridges had now given place to substantial structures of masonry and wood-work, and he missed several well-known tracts of forest-land, of which the very stumps had long since been dislodged. His eye, for years accustomed to the small farms and miniature enclosures of Europe, now dwelt with delight on immense fields of grain or clover, each of them covering a whole hill, and frequently of such extent that a single glance could not take in their limits. He saw vast orchards that seemed to contain a thousand trees, now white with blossoms that, scattered by the slightest breeze, fell around them like showers of scented snow. He missed, it is true, the hawthorn hedges of England; those beautiful walls of verdure, whose only fault is that their impervious foliage shuts out from view the fields they enclose; while the open fences of America allow the stranger to regale his eye, and satisfy his curiosity with a free prospect of the country through which he is travelling.