Clarke's stores, on the southeast corner of Arch and Water streets, show, by the arches above the present windows and doors, that the ground floors have been lowered three feet, to conform to the street there. Forty years ago the ground north of Arch street on Front street to above Race street, western side, was twelve feet higher than the present foot-pavement; for instance, where the row of modern brick buildings north of Arch street now stands, was a Friends' meeting, called Bank meeting, on a green hill, within a brick wall, and to which you went up full twelve feet, by steps-several old houses still there, with cellars out of ground, indicate the same. And below Arch street, in the neighbourhood of Combes' alley, the late old houses of Gerhard's had their first story formed of what was once the cellar part under ground. Second street, from Arch to High street, has been cut down nearly two feet below its former pavement. Fourth street, from Arch street to below High street, has been filled up full two feet. Walnut street, eastward from Second street, has been raised as much as two feet, sufficiently proved by an old house still standing on the south side of that street, which has its ground floor one foot beneath the present pavement. Walnut street, west of Secondstreet, must have been filled in greatly, as they found near there a paved street six feet beneath the present surface, in laying the iron pipes near to Dock street. In Walnut street, by Third street, the street must have been eight feet higher than now, forming quite a hill there, as the late cake house near there (once a part of an old Custom house) had nearly all of its first story formed of what was once the cellar under ground. The street, at the corner of High and Fourth streets, has been much raised. The house of C. P. Wayne, on the southwest corner, has its floor raised one foot, and originally the house had several steps of ascent. Deep floods have been seen there, by T. Matlack and others, quite across the whole street, in their early days. In Water street, above Arch street, the street must have been raised two or three feet, as a house is still standing there, Nos. 82 and 84, having six steps to go down to what was its first floor. So, too, near S. Girard's, the street is raised, and a house still there descends one step to its ground floor. In Water street, above Chestnut street, the raising is manifest by a house on the bank side having three steps down to its first floor. Several houses midway between Chestnut and Walnut streets, which go down two steps, and several below Walnut street going down one step, sufficiently prove the elevation made in Water street in those sections since those old houses were built. The most of the ground in the southwestern direction of the city, and Southwark, having been raised from two to three feet, has generally caused all the streets in that direction to be formed of earth filled in there; for instance, it may now be observed that all the oldest houses along Passyunk road below Shippen street, are full two feet under the present street. Out Fitzwater street the old houses are covered up three feet. Out South street, from Fifth to Ninth streets, the ground is artificially raised above all the old houses two and a half feet. Front street, below South street, is cut down as much as twelve feet, as the elevation of the houses on the eastern side now show. Swanson street, from Almond street southward, has been cut down as much as eight feet, as the houses on the western side sufficiently indicate. South street, from Front street to Little Water street, and Penn street continued to Almond street, severally show, by the cellars of old houses standing above ground, that those streets have been cut through a former rising ground there, once called "the hill." Eleventh street, from High street to Arch street, has required very remarkable filling up. A very good three story house at the northwest corner of Filbert street, and several frame ones northward of that street, have been filled up to the sills of the windows. Miscellanea. The following facts of sundry changes may be briefly noticed, to wit: An aged gentleman, T. H., told me he well remembered a fine field of corn in growth on the northwest corner of South and Front streets. He also remembered when water flowed into some of the cellars along the eastern side of Penn street from the river Delaware. The ground there has been made ground. On the western side it was a high steep bank from Front street. On an occasion of digging into it for sand and gravel, two or three boys were buried beneath the falling bank, and lost their lives. The late aged Mr. Isaac Parrish told me that the square from the Rotterdam inn, in Third above Race street, up to Vine street, and from Third to Fourth street, used to be a large grass lot, enclosed with a regular privet hedge; there he often shot birds in his youth; and the late Alderman John Baker said he often shot partridges there. The late aged Thomas Bradford, Esq., told me he remembered when the ground from Arch to Cherry street, lying westward of Third street, had all the appearance of made ground, having heaps of fresh earth, and several water holes. George Vaux, Esq., has often heard it mentioned among his ancestors, that Richard Hill, commissioner to Penn, was once proprietor of the land extending from Arch and Third streets to Vine and Fifth streets, which he used as a kind of farm; and when the Presbyterian church was built on the northwest corner of Third and Arch streets, it was called "on Doctor Hill's pasture." The row of good houses on the south side of Arch street, between Fourth street and the church ground, was, forty years ago, the area of a large yard, containing a coachmaker's establishment on a large scale. At Pine and Front streets, the former hill there has been taken down below the former pavement full six feet deeper, about sixteen years ago. What used to be called Fouquet's inn and bowling green, is now much altered in its appearance; it used to be very rural. Many trees, of various kinds, surrounded it. It was so much out of town, in my boyhood, that the streets running north and south were scarcely visible; there being nowhere sufficiency of houses to show the lines of the streets, and all the intervening commons marked with oblique footpaths. It stood on rising ground, (a kind of hill.) and towards Race street it had a deep descent into that street, which was quite low in that neighbourhood. I now find that Cherry street (not then thought of) is extended through the premises close to the house. [The old house, still standing, is seen near the southwest corner of Cherry and Tenth streets. It was famous in its day-with many surrounding outhouses.] Timothy Matlack, when he came to Philadelphia, in 1745, could readily pass diagonally from Third to Fourth street, through the square formed from Chestnut to High street; the houses being only here and there built. Mrs. Riley, who if now alive would be about 108 years of age, said she could well remember when Sekel's corner, at the northeast corner of High street and Fourth, was once a cow lot which was offered to her father at a rent of £10. She could then walk across from that corner diagonally to Third street by a pathway. Graydon, in his Memoirs, says, that in 1755, "in passing from Chestnut street up Fourth street, the intervals took up as much space as the buildings, and, with the exception of here and there a house, the Fifth street might then have been called the western extremity of the city." Colonel A. J. Morris, whose recollections began earlier, (ninety years ago,) says he could remember when there were scarcely any houses westward of Fourth street. The first he ever saw in Fifth street, was a row of two story brick houses (lately standing,) on the east side, a little above High street. He was then about 10 years of age, and the impression was fixed upon his memory by its being the occasion of killing one of the men on the scaffolding. The wharves along the city front on the Delaware have undergone considerable changes since the peace of 1783, and still more since 1793. Several of them had additions in front, so as to extend them more into the channel; and at several places stores were built upon the wharves; but the greatest changes were the filling up of sundry docks, and joining wharves before separated, so that you could pretty generally go from wharf to wharf without the former frequent inconvenience of going back to Water street to be able to reach the next wharf. For instance, before the present Delaware avenue was made, you could walk from Race to Arch street along the wharves, where forty years ago you could not, short of three or four interruptions. We now wish another and final improvement,-a paved wharf street the whole length of the city, with a full line of trees on the whole length of the eastern side. This would invite, and perhaps secure, a water promenade, and be in itself, some reparation for destroying the once intended promenade of the eastern side of Front street. Munday's Run was once a brook which crossed High street at Tenth street, as seen and remembered by old Butler. Arch street at the same time was only laid out to Eighth street, and all beyond was woods. Woods in that street, came down as far as Fifth street in his time, say in 1748. When he was 18 he used to drive his father's wagon down that street from his father's place at the Gulf. Elliott, in his "Enoch Wray," gives an emphatic description of a city, when advancing from its state of out-commons to the form of streets and houses-saying: "Now streets invade the country; and he strays, "All that was lovely then is gloomy now. It may be worthy of remark, that in the earliest construction of buildings in the city, there must have been some difference from the present, in the magnetic influence of the poles, or other causes of error in ranging the houses for instance Wigglesworth's old house in Second street above Chestnut, stood too much westwardly at its northern corner, and stood out too much on the pavement. So too Savial's house in Front street opposite to Combes' alley. The old house at the southwest corner of Walnut and Water streets did the same. In the streets ranging east and west, the oldest houses stood into the street too far north-for instance, the old Inn once on the corner where the Philadelphia Bank now stands, stood out so far on Chestnut street as to leave only two or three feet of pavement, and seven or eight of the houses on the opposite side of Chestnut street, stood as much back from the present range of houses. The bake house at the southwest corner of Walnut and Fifth streets, stood out too near the present gutterway in Walnut street. We have so often seen other old houses in sundry other places in the city, having the same relations and bearings, as to produce the conviction that there was, for a while, some prevailing misconception or error. INNOVATIONS AND NEW MODES OF CONDUCTING BUSINESS, &c. It is very natural that the youth at any given time, should, without inquiry, infer that all the familiar customs and things which they behold were always so before their time, when, often, many of them may have been just introduced. This fact I often realize in my observation even now among the rising generation. This reflection leads us to think that hereafter many customs may be introduced, after the practices of older cities, to which we are now strangers, but which, without some passing notice here, might not be known to be new after they had been familiarized among us a few years. I mention, therefore, customs which do not exist now, but which will doubtless come to our use from the example of Europe-such as shoeblacks soliciting to clean shoes and boots on the wearer, in the streets-dealers in old clothes bearing them on their shoulders and selling them in the public walks -men drawing light trucks with goods, in lieu of horses-men carrying a telescope by night to show through to street passengers-women wheeling wheelbarrows to vend oranges and such like articles-cobblers' stalls and book stalls, &c., placed on the sides of the footpathsmen and women ballad-singers stopping at corners to sing for pennies -porters carrying sedan chairs-women having meat and coffee stalls in the street for hungry passengers, &c. From thoughts like these we are disposed to notice several of the changes already effected within a few years past, as so many innovations or alleged improvements on the days by-gone. Candidates for Office.-Those who now occasionally set forth their claims to public favour, by detailed statements in their proper names, would have met with little or no countenance in the public suffrages in the olden time. Sheriffs have usually taken the precedence in these things, and it is known that the first person who ever had the boldness to publish himself as a candidate for sheriff, and to laud his own merits, occurred in the person of Mordecai Lloyd, in the year 1744, begging the good people for their votes by his publications in English and German. At the same time Nicholas Scull, an opposing candidate, resorted to the same measure, and apologized for "the new mode," as imposed upon him by the practice of others. Rum Distilleries.-Rum distilled from molasses was once an article largely manufactured and sold in Philadelphia. It bore as good a price as the Boston or New England rum, and both of them nearly as much as that imported from the West Indies. About the |