148 BOTANY OF THE 
cheerless to the eye in winter, and especially offensive, from the 
glare in summer, resemble rather the wards of a hospital or union 
poor-house, than rooms set apart for the reception of the travel- 
ling (and from the system of domestic economy prevalent in the 
country, often stationary) members of an affluent community. 
Barring the odious practice of expectoration, and its visible and 
disgusting results, which admits of no apology or even extenuation, 
and the too commonly disgraceful state and unseemly arrange- 
ment of certain indispensable back premises, even in establish- 
ments of such high character as the Astor House at New York, the 
traveller in the United States will rarely have cause to complain of 
want of cleanliness in the apartments, either public or private, which 
he may occupy or frequent; for, with the above most anomalous ex- 
ceptions, the Americans of the upper and middle classes, at least, 
are neat and clean in their persons and houses; and the habit of spit- 
ting, universal and intolerable as it is, does not here, as in France 
and other continental countries of Europe, annoy the senses of sight 
and hearing at the crowded table d’hôte, or in the elegantly fur- 
nished and carpetted saloons, appropriated to the ladies and their 
friends and acquaintance of either sex. From the above censure of 
American hotels, T must, however, in justice, except two splendid 
establishments, recently set on foot in Boston: a city which seems 
to take the lead of all others in the march of social refinement. 
The hotels known as the Revere and Adam’s houses, whilst secoud 
to none in the Union for cleanliness, civility to the guests, and 
excellence of the cwisine, are fitted up, at no increased charges to 
the public, with nearly every requirement of modern taste and — 
civilization. . 
August, 5th. Left New York for Philadelphia by the railroad, 
98 miles, arriving late the same night in “the quaker city:” 
an appellation it still deserves; for although the “ friends” now 
form but an inconsiderable fraction of the entire population, esti- 
. mated at about 250,000, there is an air of quiet, but substantial — 
 quaker-like respectability about the town, in strong, but not - 
. unfavourable contrast with the spirit of improvement and rivalry 
which stamps its character upon the brick and mortar of the great — 
