interesting by a succession of gentlemen's seats, which, if less elaborately finished in architecture, and garden grounds, than the lovely villas on the Thames, are still beautiful ob- jects to gaze upon as you float rapidly past on the broad silvery stream that washes their lawns. They presented a pic- ture of wealth and enjoyment that accords well with the noble city to which they are an appendage. One mansion arrested our attention, not only from its being more than usually large and splendid, but from its having the monu- ment which marked the family resting-place, rearing itself in all the gloomy grandeur of black and white marble, ex- actly opposite the door of entrance. In Virginia and Maryland we had remarked that almost every family mansion had its little grave yard, sheltered by locust and cypress trees; but this decorated dwelling of the dead seemed rather a melancholy ornament in the grounds. We had, for a considerable distance, a view of the dwell- ing of Joseph Bonaparte, which is situated on the New Jer- sey shore, in the midst of an extensive tract of land, of which he is the proprietor. Here the ex-monarch has built several houses, which are occupied by French tenants. The country is very flat, but a terrace of two sides has been raised, commanding a fine reach of the Delaware River; at the point where this terrace forms a right angle, a lofty chapel has been erected, which looks very much like an observatory; I admired the inge- nuity with which the Catholic prince had united his religion and his love of a fine terrestrial prospect. The highest part of the building presents, in every direction, the appearance of an immense cross; the transept, if I may so express it, being formed by the projection of an ample balcony, which surrounds a tower. A Quaker gentlemen, from Philadelphia, exclaimed, as he gazed on the mansion, "There we see a monument of -301- |