Excerpt from A Visit to the Principal Cities of the Western Continent: Embracing an Account of Their Situation, Origin, Plan, Extent, Their Inhabitants, Manners, Customs and Amusements, and Public Works, Institutions, Edifices,& Together With Sketches of Historical Events

It is indeed true, that in older countries, where the arts have had longer time to ripen, and wealth to increase, the traveller will find greater and more numerous objects of curiosity, than in a country, which, like our own, has recently sprung into existence, and where as yet the wealth of the people is employed rather in expansion than in tasteful improvement.

Yet, with a little more than two centuries gone over our heads, since the planting of the first colony in America, and while a good portion of that period has been spent in clearing our forests, and providing the means Of subsistence, advances have been made in literature, in the arts, in architecture, &c., creditable to the taste, genius, and enterprise of our countrymen. We have, indeed, no cities, which can compare with several in the eastern hemisphere - no monuments like theirs - no palaces, nor baronial castles - nor a hundred other objects of taste and curiosity. But, in the settlements Of a wilderness, stretching hundreds and even thousands of miles, on every side - in the erection of towns and cities - ia the manufacture of articles of taste and fancy - in the variety and expansion of commerce - ia the patronage given to the fine arts - in the elegance and even grandeur of some of our public edifices, we have exceeded all anticipations, and are without a parallel, consider ing the infancy of our country, in the history Of nations.

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