University of Virginia Library

11. THE LORGNETTE.

APRIL 11. NEW-YORK. NO. 11.

Gil Blas, before he was more than a day's journey
away from Oviedo, fell in with a very common
sort of personage, who wore a long rapier and
a ready tongue; and who was so lavish of his
praises as to win the best half of the traveler's
omelette and a capital trout to his supper. I am
inclined to think our town public not very unlike
the thriving hero of Le Sage; and that a stranger
cannot ordinarily hit upon a better method of winning
his suppers, or an omelette, than by rankly
dubbing our city an `Eighth wonder of the world.'
But the truth is, that between sarsaparillas, pills,

lectures, and new books, the town is so cram full of
puffery and praises, that I have not thought it
worth my while to follow in the same track of
senseless encomium. It has become even more
vulgar than it was on the lips of the today of Peñaflor:
and from having been a tribute paid by the
world on days of dividend, it has become a part of
the small coin of social interchange: as Swift says,
`the trouble of collecting it from the world was
too great, and the moderns have, therefore, bought
out the fee-simple.'

Thus, though I may have lost my suppers of
trout, and present favor, I trust that I may come
in by-and-by for a little moderate good-will, and
like Burchell, in the Vicar of Wakefield, who said
`fudge' at all the talk in the Primrose family, I
shall hope at the end to be credited a disinterested
purpose, and win a more thorough regard than any
of the young Squire Thornhills, who are so lavish
of their compliments, but who use them only to
seduce innocence, or to feed an overweening vanity.
The reader will remember, too, that the enthusiasm
of the old visitor at the Vicar's frequently led him
into harshness of expression, of which the sting was
only removed when it was found, on longer acquaintance,
that his love of honesty, and detestation
of all manner of chicane, was but the prompter

to his severity. May I not hope likewise, notwithstanding
my neglect of praise, a little of that return
which in the end made glad the philanthropic
Burchell?

It is by no means from lack of subject that I
have foresworn praises; indeed, they abound.
Leaving private life, and the gayety of our salons,
where enough of modesty, of womanly refinement,
and delicacy are still exhibited, to counterbalance
the persiflage of ignorant intruders, and the boldness
of such as make unmaidenly display their object,—I
might turn to the chapter of the public
charities, and show you a whole town earnest to
assist, in their distresses, those poor families who
but a little while ago were so cruelly shattered by
the wreck in Hague street. I might point to a
score of monuments of both public and private
munificence; I might note the open cordiality with
which the stranger is received and welcomed: and
the statesman, or benefactor, fêted and applauded.
But of this there is no need: and even were it
needful, I am utterly supplanted: the monopoly of
such work has been long ago assigned over by common
consent to occasional orators, speakers at public
dinners, town journals, lady dancers, and Opera
managers.

It is, indeed, not a little odious, and sometimes

painful, to find myself almost alone, if not worse
than alone, among those who represent the harsher
aspects of the town-life, its unmeaning parade, and
its senseless, social habitudes: but I console myself
with the reflection that not a few, and those worthy
of most devoted regard, will see underlying all
the irony and animadversion, enough of an honest
purpose and a true humanity, to redeem my character.
Were it not so, Fritz, I would long ago
have thrown down my pen in despair, and looked
as idly as the idlest upon the shifting currents of
our town-life.

COUNTRY STRANGERS.

I have already given you a glimpse of the Bostonian,
but he is not the only one among the
strangers in our town who is deserving of particular
mention. The Philadelphian is apt to fancy
himself every whit as good as the Bostonian, and
much better than the New Yorker. He prides
himself overmuch upon the cut of his clothes, and
until within a few years it was currently understood

that the tailor craft in the Quaker city, was
vastly superior to anything this side of the French
capital; but I very much fear that they are losing
ground in this particular, and can now no more
compare their heroes of the needle with our Piercie
Shaftons, than their Fairmount with the Croton, or
Laurel Hill with Greenwood. Still, the Philadelphian
has his claims to superiority; and though he
does not boast now of a United States Bank, or
Nicholas Biddle, he makes up by talk about the
Girard College and Liberty Hall: he is eminently
fond of the fancied European aspect of his streets:
and whoever has talked with a stray Philadelphian
without hearing somewhat of the charms of Chestnut
street, must needs have been `hard of hearing.'
At dinner he is not a little disposed to speak modestly
of the treasures of his market—its poultry,
fruit, and eggs; nor does the Philadelphia lady
once admit that our haberdashers display anything
like so tasty a stock, as may be found at Levy's.

The Philadelphian enjoys, moreover, the consideration—though
he forbears to urge it, and though
he lives in the city of brotherly love—of belonging to
a population capable of more mob enthusiasm, than
any out of sight of the hills which overtop Lyons
upon the Rhone. Following upon this quality,
though how intimately associated with it I do not

know, is his boast of the superior culture in Philadelphia
society: and one might safely imagine from
his conversation—using it in way of testimony,
and not as sample—that the erudition and polish
of a Philadelphia salon was something very hard
to be found, beyond the sound of the trickle of
Fairmount.

He would make it appear that money has little
chance in his city, against the predominating influence
of refinement and breeding; and he will point
out to you our grocer's daughter swimming through
the mazes of the waltz in the top circles of the town,
as an impropriety that would quite shock the sensibilities
of the tonnish ladies upon the Schuylkill.
I find, however, that like the phlegmatic Bostonian,
he is not insensible to the graces of such parvenus;
and that, whether amorous of the money, or the
figure, he is quite content to carry her off to his
city, hush up her origin, and engraft upon her
humble stock the elegancies of his elevated life.
Of course, she thus loses every vulgar taint, and
like the knotted dwarf stocks, on which the Burlington
gardeners set their Flemish scions, is
quite lost under the luxuriant foliage of the new
growth.

The Philadelphians are adepts in whatever relates
to hair-dye, gloves, or perfumery; and you

will be able in four instances out of five to detect
the visitor from that city, either by the dressing of
his hair, the color of his gloves, or the scent of his
trail. You will find his locks most skillfully laid
apart, and rounded up over his ears as daintily as
on the wig-blocks in Chestnut street; while one
of our New York clubmen shall show in his backhair,
such a bristly and agonized parting, as
would shock the worst bred North country buck, in
the Assize-room of York.

The Philadelphian, too, cultivates a gentleness
and softness of manner, which proves quite taking
with our romantic school-girls; and singular as it
may seem, he will preserve this softness and delicacy
up to an advanced age: even the lawyers
are fond of genteel pleas, and the doctors, though
given marvelously to blood-letting, practice with
the softest handling, on the softest pulses in the
world.

The Washingtonian sometimes wanders to our
city, though never unmindful of his majestic
Potomac, and magnificent Capitol. He contrasts,
much to our loss, the unpretending Broadway with
the sweep[1] of his Pennsylvania Avenue. There is

no great peculiarity to distinguish him, unless it
be a certain careless independence, as if he were,
by virtue of his position, a supervisor of the nation.
His dress and manner are of a mixed sort, being
picked up from such vagabond tailors and hair-dressers
as have taken refuge in the District—set
off with careless imitation of Sir Henry Bulwer's
hat or whiskers, and an assumption of the pretty
off-hand airs of an Ambassador's Clerk.

The ladies would be even less distinguishable,
were it not for an extraordinary air of boldness,
which thrives excellently well in our Metropolis.
For dress, they adopt with no little tact, such fashions
of the New York or Philadelphia beauties as
suit their style; and for self-possession, and readiness
of speech, I think they may be safely matched
against any lady that smiles. Indeed, I do not know
a better cure for maidenly diffidence—not that it
is a common failing in our town—than a two
months' residence at Washington.

From time to time, a Member who has decamped,
may be seen in our streets, wearing in an important
way the honors of his position; and looking
out upon our city as only one among his numerous
constituencies. He is, perhaps, a little surprised
that his appearance does not create a stir; more
especially as his arrival has been announced in

the Express, and if a slave-holder—possibly in the
Herald. It is matter very likely of some astonishment
that the dinner invitations do not flow in
upon him by dozens; and that the street-passers
are so very ignorant as they appear to be, of
what manner of man is among them. Nor will
the Member cut a much more important figure in
the ball-room, than in the street. In the dance,
which he cannot in New York as in Washington
avoid, he will find his stiff ungainliness no match
for the little pliant fellows who are fresh from their
Saracco lessons; and his political talk and careless
toilette will be speedily thrust in a corner, or silenced
with the sop of ècarté. Let him win fame, or
fight a duel, and he shall dance `fit for a Duke;'
and he shall kiss in public or private, by proxy or
otherwise, half the ladies of the town.

Some limbs of the army or navy, will from time
to time excite quite a furor among our streetwalkers,
and will carry a flippant, assured manner
that puts them entirely out of the reach of ordinary
civilians. They are said, however, to be respectable,
harmless fellows in their way, and quite
comfortable companions at a supper, or a quiet
rubber of whist.

Here and there about the hotels, you will see
gentlemen of very important aspect, who cannot

conceal their surprise, that everybody is not taking
note of their bigness; whereas very few, not even
the head porter or newspaper boys, are aware of
their importance. They are the judges, or great
men of country towns, excessively admired and
honored in their own parish, renting the most conspicuous
pew in their country church, and possibly
keeping the best gig and brown mare in the whole
township. Probably they have little properties,
which pass with their humble neighbors as `estates;'
but they do not figure largely in our town. It does
not occur to their embarrassed perceptions, that
amid a population of half a million, all bent on
their own affairs, the chances of the great man of a
small town, for making a stir by his entrée, are, to
say the least, very problematical. He should not
take it too much to heart, if the passers-by do not
dock their hats to him, or if his name is omitted
from the personal movements of the Express.

I really entertain serious pity for such misguided
gentlemen;—most of all at table, where
their loud tones, dignified carriage, and patronizing
looks thrown to their opposite neighbors, would
seem to merit a larger share of consideration than
they ever receive. But I am consoled with believing
that, if not admired, their own sense of dignity
does not at all flag; and they are sustained by a

self-approval that is never at fault, and never weary
of working.

Stout youngsters, too, from western cities, perhaps
making first purchases on their own account,
are quite disposed to carry off a good many of the
street honors of the town; and have evidently prevailed
on themselves to believe, that their appearance
at the Opera may create quite a sensation: it
will be perhaps true of their coat, or carriage, but
for the rest they will be doomed in most instances
to severe disappointment. Some individual of
decided western habit and dress, who has imbibed
to the full that pseudo American independence,
which mocks at all forms, and even glories in pertness
and singularity, will stare about him complacently,
as if he were as capable of the highest
art, as of making a stump speech in central Ohio.
And he smokes his cigar, and wears his hat with
very much the air of that Scotch traveler in Switzerland,
of whom Goldsmith speaks:—he had wandered
into a church where all the people were
afflicted with goitres: they of course stared at his
slim neck prodigiously: `I perceive,' said he, rising
to retire, `that I am an odd fellow here, but I
assure you that I am considered a good-looking man
at home.'

I must not forget, Fritz, to give you a portrait or

two of our stranger ladies. An American lady is
not without pride: and if it would not be counted
ungallant, I should say she had more of it, than
any woman in the world beside. Not a few, whom
we may call country fashionables, and who make
semi-annual pilgrimages to the shrine of Mr. Stewart,
are exceedingly anxious to be mistaken for
New Yorkers; and are curiously apprehensive lest
any action, or wry adjustment of dress should make
their provincial character perceptible. They are
mightily observant of dress and gait; and if they
find their country Pythoness has imposed upon
them a mantilla, or hat, the like of which is not to
be seen, they will be sure to carry back with them
a little stock of upbraiding.

Such lady is apt to run to the very verge of fashion,
in her anxiety to meet the demands of provincial
taste, which is somewhat spasmodic in its manifestations:
and she must be well assured that the
lawyer's, or apothecary's wife of her town, will not
outshine her in finery. She is anxious to conceal
any little innocent gaucherie that may pertain to
her, even from the clerks of the trading establishments;
and will assume an easy familiarity with
them, and counterfeit an acquaintance with goods,
and store-keeping generally, that is quite refreshing
to look upon. Nor is she ever ignorant of anything,

which in her view a city lady ought to
know: and she cultivates an abandon, of a caste
rarely to be met with out of the public parlors of
the hotels.

Her conversation is not demure or quiet, but
lively: and she not unfrequently hums (if she
knows it) a snatch of a fashionable Opera. If a
friend calls, to ask when she came up to town, and
how all the `folks' are in Jersey, she blinks him
with very few words; she turns talk as speedily as
possible upon the Opera, and the town topics, and
chats in the glibest possible style of Mesdames
So-and-so, of the spring modes, and fashionable
books. She has no idea of being beaten off into
provincial topics in public places. At the Opera,
she wears the air of one who is not in the least taken
aback by whatever she may see, and as if she understood
the gist of the whole matter, as well as the
keenest of the critics.

Opposed to these in their action, are the timid,
modest ladies from the country, who have not
known enough of the city to be baited by its
assumptions; they dress innocently for breakfast,
and you will meet them at nine in the morning in
brilliant evening attire. Yet withal they are very
fearful that people are looking at them, and very
certain that their dress is a very pretty one. They

are sometimes betrayed in their naïveté into looking
through a shop-window, and blush to find themselves
surrounded by such ungenteel people.

They labor under almost constant alarm about
their purses; and from the stories they have heard,
are disposed to reckon nearly every over-dressed
man either a pickpocket or cut-throat. In this they
are not far from right: still, in broad daylight, upon
Broadway, they may consider themselves comparatively
safe.

They are afraid of theatres; and if from New
England, the fear is accompanied with very zealous
and decided condemnation. The Museum does not
of course come under the same category, and may
be ventured on in virtue of an old moral tradition,
by all those who are too good for the Opera or
Niblo's. If the mother of a family, our good lady
will be very fearful, on her first visits, of the contamination
of her boys; and will look suspiciously
upon every sour, or moustached face, she sees
upon the street. She will mistake even the most
common acts of politeness, for the seductive arts
of unprincipled and designing men.

She is subject to unceasing, and most unnecessary
alarms at sight of any street-gathering, and is
convinced there must be a pickpocket or murderer
in the case; she is afraid of the cabmen, lest she be

cheated or hurried off out of the reach of humanity,
and be lost to herself, her family, and the world.
Of the omnibus drivers, she has but little better
opinion, and an absolute certainty that a pickpocket
is in every stage. She wears her vail down
in passing the Hospital, that she may not become
infected with any town cholera: and is in a distressing
panic at sight of an engine, or at the cry
of fire.

Yet withal, Fritz, these very good women of the
country, who are the butts of city ridicule, will in
nine cases out of ten, rear sons who will take the
lead away, in business, in professional pursuits, or
in the arts, from the most luxurious of the town-bred.
They will prove the efficient and active
movers of our vast body politic, while the sons of
millionaires are contenting themselves with the
empty town distinctions of a dashing coat, or a tawdry
epaulette. Town worthies, who with their brilliant
social strides, entered upon while yet only
half through their grammars, are thinking to
outstrip, and throw into ludicrous insignificance,
the slowly accumulating manhood of provincial
youths, will find realized, to their mortification,
the old fable of the hare and the tortoise. Steady
effort, persevering industry, and right moral teaching,
is even now in obscure corners, laying the basis

of characters, which twenty years hence, will control
the wealth, and the public interests of the
town.

Dress, equipages, perfumery, and the Opera will
always have native, city teachers; but the Pulpit,
the Exchange, Journalism, and the Bar, are drawing
in recruits from the rough sons of hard country
study, and of old-fashioned, rigid, academical education,
whose energy, spirit, and influence, will one
day make the hot-house progeny of the town quiver
in their shoes.

Show me an influential journalist, a rising man
at our bar, a preacher at once profound and practical,
a physician eminent in his profession, a merchant
who is fertile in enterprise, and successful by
honest industry, and I will show you one who
knew little or nothing of the fashionable life of the
town, until his mental and moral character was
already formed. On the other hand, show me a
lawyer rich in political intrigue, a doctor distinguished
by nostrums, a conversationalist fertile in
equivoques, a poetaster fatiguing the language
with his poverty, a merchant who is rich by successive
bankruptcies, or defalcations, and twenty
to one, he has been dandled in the endearing arms
of Fashion, and while yet in his teens, has converted
his feeble art of the grammar, to the crowning
arts of the boudoir.

FAMILY AND ANCESTORS.

This is a tender subject, my dear Fritz; and it is
capital advice that the old Don gives his Squire:
little may be gained in broaching it, and much may
be lost. But my notices of the town-life would be
sadly incomplete, if I were to omit the consideration
of so important an element in the graduation
of our social scale.

The pride which induces a man to cherish the
memory of an honored, and respected ancestor, is
not an ignoble pride,—nor is it an unusual one;
and he must be a sot indeed who is insensible to
the regard, which by common acclaim should attach
to the name of his sire. But this ancestral
pride needs some caution in the using; it may
serve as the groundwork of very dangerous boastings,
and attract a degree of attention, or provoke
a contrast, that the boaster can very poorly bear.
A simpleton who should forever be declaiming upon
the talent of an ancestor, would only make his
weakness the more palpable, and draw down the
reproach of having harmed a great name, by association
with a pitiful soul. As he cannot be great

himself, it were much better that he did not trace
his descent from greatness.

Yet strange as it may seem, Fritz, these are the
very ones who are forever talking of their pedigree,
and raking up from their family tombs, a distinction
which could never belong to their family character.
Nothing indeed is more natural than for
the man, who has not within himself the means of
challenging popular esteem, to take it boldly from
the ashes of his fathers: necessity, in a measure,
justifies the action, and the theft of the bread of
ancestral distinction, is pardonable in those descendants,
who are starving under the hunger of contempt.

You may think, Fritz, that such observations
have no aptness in my studies of this Republican
town; but if so, you would be strangely mistaken.
Our Republicanism has not yet so far individualized
the man or the family, as to make either reliant
solely on their own action, name, or character,
for distinction.

We have not only the old and meritorious pride
in family names, honorably associated with our Colonial
History, but the importation of other foreign
luxuries has brought in its train, an immense
amount of the worship of family splendor and imaginary
genealogies; which as they make the basis

of much of the feudal aristocracy, are serving as
the apologies and adornments of our own. They
are just the apologies indeed, which are needed to
make it good, and render it effective among those
whom it is intended to impress.

A man's own distinction and successes are losing
their force amid the classified and billeted brilliants
of our upper circles. The homely honor of having
wrought out a name for one's self, or having accumulated,
by successful and public spirited enterprise,
a great estate, is beginning to lose ground
before that spirit of conventionality and foreign imitativeness,
which finds its best types in liveries,
spurious heraldry, or in the habit of display and of
exclusion.

Our rising men, of such callings as have heretofore
been reckoned outcast, are beginning to understand
this matter, and are learning that bravado,
and well-cut coats-of-arms are better worth, than
any study of refinement, or pretence for cultivation.
Families of our town will presently be known from
their crests, and all our brokers make their servingmen
conspicuous by a vulture stamped upon their
buttons. The Digg's livery, and the Mugg's coach
will be the best descriptive types of the respective
families, and will be as familiarly known as the
coat-collar of Northumberland, or the hat-band of

the Marquis of Westminster. All this serves as
the mark of a distinction, which might otherwise
escape notice, and secures to the offspring, a comfortable
ancestral basis, without any fees at the
herald's office.

But we are not yet so far gone in European notions,
nor so blinded by these miserable excuses
and cravings for title, but that their flimsiness is
sometimes seen through distinctly enough, to expose
the wretched poverty of what is behind. Imagine
an honest and respectable grocer, tailor, shop-keeper,
or whomever you please, not showing any
pride in that industry which has wrought out for
him an independence, nor making his tastes and
expenditures keep cheerful and honored company,
but like a scurvy coward that he is, turning his
back on the trade that has enriched him, and trying
to hide its remembrance by new-vamped crests,
and the blazonry of a coach panel! What sort of
manly republican independence is this? Let him
trick himself as he will, the peacocks, whose plumes
he has stolen, will have their peck at him, and
the sable jackdaws, to whose tribe he belongs, will
utterly despise him!

Observe, Fritz, that I am throwing out no sneers
upon any particular calling or trade. It would ill
become me, a pamphleteer, without name (and as

my honored friend, Mrs. K—, alledges, `not in
society'[2] ), to be so bold. Why should we, indeed,
in any manner decry, or make light of those envied
possibilities which our blessed Republic guaranties,
and which will make the coal-boy of to-day, the
judge, or the millionaire of to-morrow? There is no
trade, and no profession, which is not respectable
for an American, except the trade of pretence, and
the trade of dishonesty.

And it is this very pretence, my dear Fritz, that
I want most to rebuke; it is the covering up of the
individual, and his personal acts or acquisitions, with
the patched and parti-colored coat of an adopted
European artificiality; it is the shame for what we
are, and the pretension to what we are not. That
American must be weak indeed, who wishes to
prop up his republican manhood on the rotten stilts
of an extinct feudalism! I will not envy him if
he stands, nor pity him if he falls.

My up-stairs neighbor, the gray-haired lodger,
with whom I have had frequent conversations on
this, as well as kindred topics, considers himself,
by virtue of a name bearing the Dutch prefix of
Van, one of the `old families;' and though he is as

poor as a Christian need be, he yet looks with ineffable
disdain upon what he calls the pretenders of
the day. His name, and a snuff-box, are all that
have come down to him from a glorious ancestry.
He cherishes both with equal pride and tenderness,
and never taps at his box without thanking Heaven
that he was born a Van.

He of course reckons the broad-skirted Dutchmen
as the elder members of our aristocracy, and
is disposed to look with strong sentiments of distrust
upon any which does not smack of the old
Dutch flavor. He affects great indifference at
sight of the equipages and houses of our up-town
great, and talks complacently of the time when our
neighborhood was the centre of wealth and respectability.
Indeed, he humors his fancy with the idea
that a large proportion of it still remains, though I
must confess that we have but a scurvy set of
neighbors. I am strongly inclined to think that
the old gentleman, with all his pride, would be
tempted to give up his broad skirts, and the Van
to his name, if he could only secure a good slice
each day from the comfortable dinners that our
parvenus are consuming; for the love of the luxury
that wealth brings, is, I find, a most prevalent
affection, as well of old families, as of new ones;
and nothing will so reconcile most men to lack of

ancestral badges, and a sounding name, as a plentiful
provision of all the comforts of life, and a free
license to indulge.

Among the pleasant little artifices which are
adopted by those emulous of ancestral honors, is
that of changing the name, by transposition of a
letter or two, into something having strong affinities
with the great names of history: this practice,
if followed up with philologic attention, will result
before many generations, in an entire transformation,
and in the open possession of an ancestral root and
tree, that will most amply repay the pains-taking.
A change of pronunciation, if insisted on, will not
unfrequently do wonders, in giving an air to a man's
title; and if sufficiently romantic, or illustrious, it
may serve to christen a country-seat, or a town residence—much
to the undisguised admiration of the
suburban classes.

Wealth of itself, is not understood to create any
immediate ancestral claims; time enough must
elapse for the life and death of an hypothecated
ancestry; which time has been shortened down in
some instances to the very brief period of three or
four winters. A short period, it is true, as the
world goes generally; but we `manage those
things better in our town.'

I do not mean to say, Fritz, that wealth supposes

no ancestry at all, which to be sure, would leave
a frightful hiatus for modesty to tumble in; but it
is such as is not suited to the boasts of the heir;
and might possibly be as irksome to his pride as
that hinted at in the French couplet:

What particular action, or claims upon distinction,
are of the best complexion to make up a good,
compact, ancestral reputation, I can hardly tell.
Services rendered the state would of course weigh
considerably; but if I might be permitted to judge
from existing examples, I should say that the accomplishment
of nothing, either for the state or the
town, was nearly as good. Be as it may, however,
distinguished families are multiplying like witchcraft.
New families are dying out, and old ones
are sprouting all over the town. They will presently
become as plentiful as they are in Virginia.

You have heard, Fritz, Southey's bad story of
the New Gate Calendar—how it was bought up
by American Colonists, looking up their genealogies.
If the Messrs. Harper would undertake a reprint,
and the Tribune and Courier give their favorable
notices, we have no doubt but it would
prove a profitable venture.

I have often wondered, my dear Fritz, what a

curious figure the ancestors of our ladies and gentlemen
of ton would cut, if suffered to come up to
the light, and mingle for a little time in the festivities
of the town. Not that they would be cordially
welcomed by all their distinguished issue, for we
fancy that many a poor knight of the needle, or
awl, would be shuffled off very unceremoniously
and very unfilially, into the basement rooms.

In one quarter we should see a broad-skirted old
Dutchman, in cocked hat, and with cane mounted
with buck-horn, wheezing and puffing down some
dim business alley in search of his great-grandson,
or perhaps coming upon him in his dancing practice,
and uttering an indignant `Dunder and
Blixem,' at the unscrupulous familiarity of the
Saracco women. In another direction we might
find some great expounder of colonial jurisprudence,
searching out his descendants among the newly rich,
emulous of rivaling the show of their neighbors,
and not at all, of sustaining the intellectual dignity
of the name. A humble, dapper little fellow, of
a century back, familiar in his day with shears or
yard-stick, and who had left a company of dapper
girls comfortably at the counter, would burst upon
his great-grandchildren amid all the brilliancy of
the Opera, and watch with wondering eyes at their
well-modulated applause of such music as he surely

never heard before death,—and it would be uncharitable
to suppose he had heard such since.

Some rusty old coachman might resume his place
upon the box of a carriage, in which the pink of
our fashion, his posterity, are rustling in silks; and
many a grandpapa would, if invited filially to the
home of his descendants, whet an appetite with
French ragouts, that in the old reign of the flesh
had sated itself on cheese and Dutch herring.

But quite the worst of it all would be, that the poor
ancestry would be wished heartily back to the hottest
of places, rather than have their insignificance, and
real presence, mar the lustre of our `old families.'
There would be such bitter tears shed over their
reappearance, as never watered their funeral or
tombs; and the unoffending little cobblers would
be hurried off to their leather and lapstone, as peremptorily
as when old Peter Stuyvesant caught
them at their political meddling.

Yet this revival, Fritz, of the true state and pomp
of our ancestry would be a most republican display:—great
because of its diversity, and of the
proof it would offer of that social elasticity, which
belongs to our scheme, and which will ensure to
industry and integrity, whatever may be its station,
wealth and honor. Alas, for human nature, that
it should blush for its necessities, and that such effort

should be made to hide an origin, which is
perhaps the only basis of its honor!

And in this connection, my dear Fritz, I cannot
forbear turning my glass toward that painful
tragedy whose blood and mystery have not yet
passed from the minds of men. I allude to a recent
murder, which may be traced back, step by
step, to the impulses of a social pride; a desire to
blend, and be even with that assumed and admitted
aristocracy, which, though it might have been
based on refinement, needed, in the judgment of
the unfortunate culprit, the trappings of wealth for
its sustenance.

If social education and popular habit had not
grafted upon him the inevitable necessity of doing
something more than regular performance of duty,
and basing his position upon something more showy
than gentlemanly address, the motive would have
been wanting to those first oversteppings of the
means of living, to that obliquity which induced
unfairness of commercial dealing, and to the final
issue of the dreadful tragedy. Dr. Webster (if
guilty) is as much the victim of our social heresies,
as he is of a brutal passion. If men had been respected
more entirely for what they are, and not for
what their habirations or their dinners are, Dr.
Webster might still have been the respectable lecturer,

the successful subduer of his own passions,
and the esteemed father. But the obeisance paid
to wealth and to genteel living, was strong enough
and general enough to bear him down in its tide;
and in the fear of being submerged, he must needs
thrust another under—to the grave.

It is idle to say that he would have been as much
respected, if his living had been modest and commensurate
with his means; probably he might have
been; but the popularity and commonness of an
opposing opinion, making its manifestations most
strong and patent, seduced him from such belief—
to his fall.

Not one bankruptcy in five but owes its origin
to the same social causes; and the `getting into
society' with curtains and coaches, is a fallacy
that is `getting' a great many very fast out of the
bounds of honesty and independence.

Nor will I forbear, Fritz, to enter my testimony
with pride, to the dignity of that Court which has
not been shaken by prominence of social position,
and which has weighed talent and scientific attainment
as nothing, when opposed to those great interests
of humanity and common justice which our
Republican rule professes to protect.