4740. LIFE, City.—
A city life offers
* * * more means of dissipating time, but
more frequent also and more painful objects
of vice and wretchedness. New York, for example,
like London seems to be a cloacina
of all the depravities of human nature. Philadelphia
doubtless has its share. Here [Virginia],
on the contrary, crime is scarcely
heard of, breaches of order rare, and our
societies, if not refined, are rational, moral
and affectionate at least.—
To William Short. Washington ed. vii, 310.
(M.
1823)
