The houses average three stories, but in the best streets, those of the first class are run up to five, and even six, and are of great depth: indeed, I should say, the inhabitants of this city generally enjoy greater space in their lodgings than is afforded to those of any other large capital. Where population increases rapidly rents are necessarily high; and a good house in Philadelphia costs about as much, independent of taxation, as a dwelling of the same class in London.
Besides the great market, which gives its name to the dividing line of the city, and runs through its whole breadth, there are several others, less extensive perhaps, but all alike under cover, well adapted to the purpose, and boasting a due proportion of the abundance of good things, which, profusely displayed on all sides, give ready evidence of the agricultural wealth of the neighbourhood.
Numbers of the best market-farmers for vegetables, poultry, butter, &c. are Germans, who, although most earnest in enriching the country by their labour, yet cling with strange tenacity to the customs and language of "Fader-land." Their costume and manner yet continues as distinct and recognizable as was the appearance of their progenitors on landing here some eighty years back, for the colony from which they are chiefly derived had existence about the middle of the eighteenth century; and many of these men, yet speaking no word of English, are of the third generation. They have German magistrates, an interpreter in courts when they act as jurors, German newspapers, &c.; and are the stoutest, if not the promptest, asserters of democracy.
They are usually found a little in arrear on the subject of all passing events; and at election times, or on occasions of extraordinary stir, when a man is striving to render them au courant with late occurrences, they will now and then interrupt their informant with, "Bud why de teufel doesn't Vashington come down to de Nord and bud it all to rights?"
The public buildings are here of a more ambitious style of architecture than any of the other cities can boast, and some of them are built in exceeding good taste; but the one which had most interest in my eyes was the old State-house, wherein the "Declaration of Independence" was signed. The Senate-chamber is, I fancy, little changed since that period; and contained, when I was last within it, models for various public works: amongst others, several for a heroic statue of Washington, about to be erected, somewhat late in the day to be sure, by the city; others for the new college, now building, according to the will of the late S. Girard, and intended to assist in perpetuating his name and wealth to all posterity.
Such appears to have been the great object of the will of this worthy citizen, and there is every prospect of its fully answering the purpose, since it has already set the whole community by the ears, and promises to prove as prolific of evils as the strong box of Miss Pandora, without having even Hope at the bottom.
This man, who has been so much eulogized dead, seems, as well as I could glean amongst his contemporaries, to have been anything but estimable in his living character. He is universally described as having been tricky, overreaching, and litigious in his dealings as a merchant; an unfeeling relation, an exacting, ungrateful, and forgetful master; and a selfish, cold-hearted man: unoccupied with any generous sympathy, public or private, throughout a long life, devoted to one purpose with sleepless energy, and to one purpose only—making and hoarding money; which, living, he contrived, as far as in him lay, to render as little beneficial to any as possible, and, dying, disposed of to his own personal glorification, but to the vexation of the community, amongst which he appeared to have lived unhonoured, and certainly died unregretted!
I am aware that "de mortuis nil nisi bonum" has usually been applied to cases similar to the above; "nil nisi justem" I think a sounder reading where a man is held up as a public example, and deem that the selection of a church or a college for a monument should not be permitted to shield the base from animadversion, or call for honours to the worthless.