CHAPTER I.
Walk to the Battery.—The Breakfast.—Conversation of young travelled Americans.—Their notions of Politics, Negroes, and Women.
“He cannot be a perfect man,
Not being try’d and tutor’d in the world:
Experience is by industry achiev’d,
And perfected by the swift course of time.”
Shakspeare.—Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act I. Scene 3.
Some years ago, early of a fine morning in the month of July, I was sauntering with some Southern friends down Broadway towards the Battery, which forms the eastern extremity of the city of New York. The night had been most uncomfortably hot, the thermometer ranging above 90°, and the sun’s lurid glare, produced by a thick heavy mist,—the usual companion of a sultry day in America,—gave to the sleeping city the appearance of a general conflagration.
As long as we were in Broadway, not a breath of air was stirring, and respiration really difficult; but, when we arrived at the Bowling Green, a delicious sea-breeze imparted new vigour to our exhausted frames, and increased gradually as we were approaching the Battery. Arrived at this beautiful spot, the air was quite refreshing, and the view one of the finest I ever beheld. The harbour was covered with sails, a rich verdure overspread the neighbouring hills and islands, and the mingled waters of the ocean and the Hudson, gently rippled by the breeze, tremblingly reflected the burning orb of day.
“What a delicious spot this is!” said I; “there is nothing equal to it in any part of the Union!”
“Certainly not,” said one of my companions, who had stopped to survey the beauty of the landscape; “yet how many Americans do you think enjoy it?”
“It is certainly not a very fashionable place,” said I.
“How could it be?” replied he: “all the fashionable people have moved to the West-end of the town.”
“Where the atmosphere is not half so pure, the breeze not a quarter so refreshing as here; and where, instead of this glorious harbour,—this ocean, the emblem of eternity,—they see nothing but sand,—a barren desert, interspersed here and there by a block of brick buildings,” added the other.
“This our people imagine to be a successful imitation of English taste,” observed the first. “They forget that the West-end of London contains magnificent squares and public walks; and that it is in the immediate neighbourhood of the Parks.”
“And yet,” said the other, “if to-morrow the Southwark and all the boroughs east of the Thames were to get into fashion, our New York aristocracy would imitate the example, and inhabit once more this beautiful site.”
“It is true,” resumed I, “this imitation of the English is not a very happy one; and deserves the more to be ridiculed, as it refers merely to forms, and not to the substance of things. I am in a habit of taking a stroll here every evening; but have not, for the space of two months, met with a single individual known in the higher circles. Foreigners are the only persons who enjoy this spot.”
“And do you know why?” interrupted one of my friends: “it is because our fashionable Americans do not wish to be seen with the people; they dread that more than the tempest; and it is for this reason all that is really beautiful in the United States is considered vulgar. The people follow their inclination, and occupy that which they like; while our exclusives are obliged to content themselves with what is abandoned by the crowd.”
“I am not very sorry for that,” said the second; “our exclusives deserve no better fate. As long as the aristocracy of a country is willing to associate with the educated classes of the bourgeoisie they set a premium on talent and the example of good breeding. This aristocracy here is itself nothing but a wealthy overgrown bourgeoisie, composed of a few families who have been more successful in trade than the rest, and on that account are now cutting their friends and relations in order to be considered fashionable.”
Here we heard the ringing of the bell for the departure of the hourly steam-boat for Staten Island. As we intended to join a small party to breakfast at “the Pavilion,” we quickly hurried on board, and in less than a minute were floating on the water. A fine brass band was stationed on deck, and the company consisted of a great number of pretty women with their attendant swains, who thus early escaped from the heat of the city in order to return to it at shopping-time,—from twelve till two o’clock. A few lonely “females,” only protected by huge baskets filled with provisions, had also come “to enjoy the concord of sweet sounds,” and a trip down the harbour for a quarter of a dollar, previous to returning home from the market. The whole company were in excellent spirits, the basket-ladies being arranged on one side,—unfortunately, however, to windward,—and the ladies and gentlemen on the other, the band playing involuntary variations to the tune of “Auld lang syne.”
In precisely an hour from the time we had left the wharf we landed on Staten Island, and proceeded at once to the place of rendezvous. This was a large public-house fitted up in a most magnificent style by Colonel M***, late keeper of the A*** Hotel, one of the few landlords possessed of the talent of making people comfortable. The building was very spacious; but its wings were a little too long, and the small garden in front almost entirely destitute of trees,—a fault from which no public, and hardly any private, mansion in the United States, can be said to be entirely exempted.
The Americans have, indeed, a singular aversion to trees and shrubs of every description: their highest idea of perfection in a landscape being an extended plain sown with grass. They consider trees as a mark of barbarism, and are, in their zeal for civilization, extirpating them wherever they find them. The hills and islands in the harbour of Boston, which were once studded with the majestic pine and the gnarled oak, are now completely shorn: the city of Albany, built on a gentle declivity once covered with variegated wood, is daily becoming more and more flat and less shady; the fashionable inhabitants paying more for levelling the ground, and felling the trees, than for the erection of their dwellings. The beautiful trees on the shores of the Monongahela and the Ohio are, at an enormous expense, destroyed root and branch, to give the inhabitants of Pittsburgh the benefit of light and air; and even the “old liberty tree” of Boston, with all its historical associations and recollections, stands no more. How singularly this taste of the Americans contrasts with that of the English, who, after burning and sacking the colony of New Jersey, placed a sentinel near the tree under which William Penn had concluded the treaty with the Indians!
The fault of the garden apart, the Pavilion of Staten Island, or “the Brighton Pavilion,” as it is sometimes called, offers really a fine and healthy retreat from the noise and dirt of New York; and this the more so, as, from its elevation, it is accessible on all sides to the sea-breeze. We ascended a few steps, and found ourselves at once in a capacious bar-room, fitted up in the best American style. Labels of all sorts, and in all languages, stuck on innumerable bottles placed at small distances from one another, and interlined with lemons and oranges, whose bright and pale gold was again relieved by the dark-green hock, and the silver-headed champaign bathed in ice. By the side of these stood the grave and manly Carolina madeira, the fiery sherry, and the sombre port. For the lovers of condensation there were also old French cognac, Irish and Scotch whisky, and an ominous-looking bottle, whose contents portended to be the original beverage of Van Tromp. The favourite drink, however, seemed to be mint-julep; for a huge mass of ice and a forest of mint, together with two large bottles of French and peach brandy, gave, alas! but too positive proofs of the incapability of the landlord to maintain the balance of power among spirits so different in action and principle.
The bar was thronged, even at this early hour, with young men from sixteen to twenty-four years of age, for whom the busy bar-keeper was preparing ice-punch, mint-juleps, port and madeira sangarie, apple-toddy, ginsling, &c. with a celerity of motion of which I had heretofore scarcely seen an example. This man evidently understood the value of time, and was fast rising into respectability; for he was making money more quickly than the “smartest” broker in Wall Street.
“Mr. S*** and Mr. P***?” said he, as he saw us enter; and, on being answered in the affirmative, touched a bell, which was instantly answered by a servant. “Show these gentlemen to No. 3.”
We were led into a large room, in which from fifteen to twenty persons might have been assembled, exciting their appetite for breakfast by drinking juleps.
“I present you a new friend,” said one of my companions. “I hope you will be gratified with making his acquaintance. Monsieur de *** from Germany.”
Hereupon all the gentlemen rose, one by one, and shook hands with me; each of them saying, “How d’ye do? Very glad to see you.” At last one of them, by way of entering into conversation, told me that he was exceedingly glad to meet with a gentleman from that country. “I have myself,” said he, “passed a long time in Germany.”
“What part of Germany?” demanded I.
“Oh, no particular part,” replied he; “only principally up and down the Rhine. Capital country that!—excellent hock!—fine historical associations!—excellent people the Germans!”
“I am very glad you liked them,” said I.
“Yes, indeed, I always did. What noble castles those! How do you call that beautiful ancient castle opposite Coblenz? Erin-bright-in-steen?”
“You mean Ehrenbreitenstein,” said I; “that is a Prussian fortress.”
“No matter what you call it,” said he, “it is a splendid specimen of architecture. I wish we had something like it in this country.”
“I really do not see the use of it,” said I.
“But I do,” said he; “we want a little chivalry of that sort,—our people are altogether too prosaic.”
“They are too much occupied with politics,” observed another gentleman.
“Altogether too much, sir,” repeated the admirer of Germany.
“But they say it is all for their own good; it improves their condition.”
“I don’t want to know their condition. Heaven save me from politics!”
“It is certainly not a flourishing trade in this country,” said I.
“Not only that, sir; but it is not a respectable one.”
“And why not?”
“Because every blackguard meddles with it.”
“But not every blackguard is successful in it.”
“Quite the reverse; it is only the blackguard who is successful.”
“That’s an old one,” cried an elderly-looking gentleman.
“But who will talk politics on a hot day without taking a julep? Hollo, John! a dozen fresh juleps, with plenty of ice,—and rather stiff, mind ye.”
“It’s no use to talk politics to us, sir,” observed a Mr. *** of Baltimore, addressing me in a calm, tranquil voice, which had something of the tone of advice and condescension in it; “we are no longer green.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean precisely what I say,” replied he. “We have all more or less passed the age in which respectable Americans take an interest in politics; and are, thank God! not yet sufficiently old and decrepit to recur to it once more because we are unfit for everything else.”
“Yes, yes!” interrupted a highly respectable gentleman, whom I had known in Boston, and who had a high reputation for being fond of cards; “a man never takes to politics in this country unless he is ruined in business. I have seen a hundred instances of it in my own city. Let a man have a falling-out with work, and he is sure to turn patriot.”
“Because patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel, as Johnson said,” remarked a young barrister, visibly contented with having had an opportunity of exhibiting his erudition.
“Happy country this!” observed one of my companions, “in which every scoundrel turns patriot!”
“Say, rather, in which every patriot is a scoundrel,” rejoined the lawyer.
“Why, Tom!” exclaimed the Bostonian, “you have broken out in a new place!”
“Why, a man will say a good thing now and then,” replied the professional man. “But where the d—l is that nigger with the juleps? I’ll be hanged if a person can get waited upon in New York without bribing the servants!”
Here the waiter entered.
“What have you been about, sirrah? It’s more than a quarter of an hour since that gentleman” (pointing to the Baltimorian) “asked for some juleps. Can’t you move quicker?”
“I goin’ as fast as I kin,” grinned the negro; “but dere are too many gem’men at de bar.”
“I find,” observed a grave-looking New-Yorker, who until now had not opened his mouth, except for the purpose of admitting the julep, “that our black servants are getting worse and worse every day ever since that bigoted scoundrel T*** has commenced preaching abolition. Those black devils have always been a nuisance; but now ‘a respectable white man’ can hardly walk up and down Broadway of a Sunday afternoon without being jostled off the side-walk by one of their desperate gangs.”
“And it is still worse in Philadelphia,” observed Major ***, “owing to the philanthropy of our quakers. One of those black beasts, not more than a week ago, actually eyed my sister through a quizzing-glass as she was walking in Chestnut-street, accompanied by her younger sister.”
“Good God!” cried the New-Yorker, “has it come to this? Must our respectable females be insulted in the streets by a set of dastardly slaves!”
“I can hardly believe it,” said a Virginian, who appeared to be displeased with the turn the conversation had taken. “The example must have been set him by some white person. Your Philadelphia dandies have, the whole live-long day, no other amusement but staring women out of countenance.”
“Well explained!” ejaculated a young man who had just returned from Paris; “a negro is a mere ape,—he is but a link between man and monkey. C’est en effet un singe dégénéré.”
“Witty dog!” said the Philadelphian; “just returned from France!”
“For Heaven’s sake!” cried the Virginian, “let us not talk about negroes and abolition. I am resolved never to mention the subject again to friend or foe. If any of those emancipation preachers ever comes to my plantation, I have left the strictest order with my overseer to hang him on the spot. My neighbours are resolved to do the same, and I trust to God the custom will become general throughout the country.”
“Bravo!” exclaimed the Philadelphian,—“Virginia for ever!”
“You may well drink to Virginia,” exclaimed the gentleman from that state; “it is the pearl of the Union!”
“So it is, so it is!” shouted the company. “It has produced the greatest men in the United States!”
“George Washington!” cried the Virginian.
“George Washington!” echoed the company.
“Thomas Jefferson!” continued the Virginian.
“Don’t mention him, for mercy’s sake!” bellowed the Philadelphian; “that vile blasphemer!—that infidel scoundrel!—that godless father of democracy, who has been the ruin of our country.”
“In what manner has he ruined it?” demanded I.
“By introducing that vilest of curses, universal suffrage.”
“But I see the country prosper more and more every year.”
“You do not see far enough, sir,” said he. “You do not understand the working of universal suffrage. An example, perhaps, may illustrate the case. You may have heard of Mr. B***, who is one of our first citizens, has always been at the head of the very first society, and is worth, at least, half a million of dollars in bank stock, independent of a very respectable real estate. Well, sir: this same Mr. B***, at our last election, went himself to the ballot-box, and, with his own hand, put in his vote as if he were one of our simplest citizens. Was not that republican? Was there ever a better republican than Mr. B***?”
“Certainly not. But what has that to do with the theory of universal suffrage, except that he was obliged to do so if he wished to vote at all?”
“Hear me out, sir; hear me out!” shouted the Philadelphian. “Scarcely had Mr. B*** deposited his vote, when one of your regular ‘whole-hog, hurrah-for-Jackson men,’ who, according to every appearance, was not worth five dollars in the world, stepped up, and, right within hearing of our Mr. B***, told the officer with the most impudent sneer that he intended to destroy Mr. B***’s vote. These, sir, are the consequences of universal suffrage.”
“And then people wonder if we are not seen at the ballot-boxes,” said the New-Yorker. “Who the d—l would scramble up among a parcel of ragamuffins in order to exercise a privilege shared by every pauper! I would as lief do common militia duty.”
“What you have told of your friend Mr. B*** in Philadelphia has happened to my friend Mr. H*** in Baltimore,” cried the Virginian.
“And to myself,” added the Bostonian; “and since that time I am determined never to disgrace myself again by voting at an election, except to oblige a friend.”
“Jefferson has ruined the country!” shouted the whole company.
“I only wonder,” said one of my friends, “he has left sufficient brandy in the country for you to get drunk on.”
“We get that from France,” rejoined the witty gentleman; “the Americans produce nothing but whisky and rum, and those only of the most inferior quality. Whenever we want anything decent, we are obliged to send for it from abroad.”
“That’s a fact,” added the Bostonian; “and pay the dealer a hundred per cent, profit on it.”
“And, after all, get it adulterated,” said the New-Yorker.
“I cannot conceive,” remarked the Philadelphian, “how a gentleman of fortune can possibly live in this country.”
“He is a great fool if he does,” replied the French wit. “England for a rich man, and France for a man of moderate fortune! that’s my motto; and as for us,—I mean the higher classes of Americans,—we are everywhere at home—except in the United States. En Amérique les étrangers sont chez eux, tandis que les Américains ne sont chez eux que quand ils sont à l’étranger.”
Here the company burst into a horse-laugh.
“Just returned from Paris,” whispered the Philadelphian; “capital fellow!”
“Won’t you translate it to me?” asked the Bostonian; “I used to know French when I went to school, but I have forgotten it since.” (With a significant look.) “You know our girls don’t speak it.”
“‘Strangers are in America at home, while the Americans themselves are only at home when they are abroad,’ said our friend Charles, and he is certainly right; for America, ever since we are overrun by Irish and German paupers, is not fit for a gentleman to live in.”
“If I had my own way,” observed the Gallicised American, “I would never live in any other place but Paris.”
“And I in London,” remarked the Bostonian.
“Our tastes are so different,” rejoined the former; “you like everything that is English,—I love all that is French. Besides, in France one gets so much more easily into society; the English, you know, are ridiculously exclusive.”
“But have we not a minister in London? Can we not always be presented at court?”
“Not always; there are too many applicants.”
“But it is precisely the same thing in France. One of my acquaintances wrote me from Paris, that the American minister, during the space of one year, received no less than fifteen hundred applications for presentation to their French majesties.”
“That may be: but in England one is often obliged to put up with the society of the middle classes, or at best with a sort of respectable gentry; while in France we never associate with anything less than a count or a marquis. My aunt would not speak to a bourgeois! She is descended from the Princess of M——y, which, you know, is one of the most ancient families of France; and likes Paris so much, that I don’t think she will ever return to the United States. She can’t bear America!”
“She would not be wise if she did,” observed my friend, half ironically; “she receives a great deal more attention there than she would at home.”
“So do all our women,” observed the lawyer. “Our people do not know how to treat them, and our women do not know how to take advantage of their position; they are only fit ‘to suckle fools and chronicle small beer.’”
“Very well brought in by our professional friend!” cried the Bostonian. “I say, Tom! what did your mother say when you left home to practise law in this city?”
“She gave me her blessing, and told me, ‘Go, my son, and improve the talent God has given you, and you cannot fail to make money.’ It was very kind in her, poor soul! she little expected I would draw on her regularly every quarter.”
“But how do you spend your time,” demanded the Bostonian, “if you do not practise law?”
“Literature, literature!” exclaimed the lawyer, emptying his glass. “We all dabble, more or less, in that.”
“True,” rejoined the Bostonian, “I forgot all about literature.”
“What o’clock is it?” demanded the child of Paris, stretching himself with the air of an homme blasé.
“Nearly ten,” answered my friend.
“Then I wish we might have breakfast, as I have promised to call upon a young lady at one.”
“Don’t you get yourself into a scrape, Charles.”
“Don’t you be concerned about me,” replied Charles; “I have lived too long in Paris to be easily taken in.”
“But our women are not like the French.”
“That’s one reason why I don’t like them. Their everlasting pretensions, their air of superiority, and, above all, that imperious spirit which receives all our petits soins as a mere tribute which is due to them, have often completely disgusted me. I like to be at my ease with a woman; it’s so much more natural.”
“You are not singular in that,” remarked the gentleman from New York; “I have had the same taste ever since I was a boy of sixteen.”
“What! without having been in Europe?”
“Certainly; but then I was brought up in New York, which, you know, is a little Europe of itself. I have heard Frenchmen say, that, next to Paris, there is nothing like it in the world.”
“Pooh!” cried the Bostonian, “I’d rather live in Boston ten times over; and so would you, if you knew it as well as I do; but that, you know, takes time.”
“Don’t talk to me about Boston,” said the Philadelphian; “your women don’t even know how to dress.”
“And run up bills at the mantua-makers,” rejoined the Bostonian.
“The prettiest women in the United States are in Baltimore,” observed the Baltimorian.
“Say rather girls,” interrupted the Gallo-American; “I have never seen a handsome woman in America yet: if there were one, you would not see her in society; she would stay at home nursing her babies.”
“And send her young daughters into company for our boys to dance with.”
“And dance they must, because they can’t talk.”
“What would you have a girl of sixteen talk of, pray?”
“Nothing that I care for. When I was in Paris, I only talked to married women. They alone understand the most delicate allusions, listen with dignity to our affecting tales, and are grateful for the slightest attention, without expecting an immediate proposal and saddling themselves on you for life.”
“That would not do in this country,” said the Bostonian with great earnestness; “our women are brought up in a different manner.”
“Why, upon my word!” exclaimed the Philadelphian with a horse-laugh, “our Boston friend talks to us as gravely as a New England schoolmaster. If you don’t leave off some of these ridiculous Yankee notions, you’ll never cut a figure in the fashionable world. But you must excuse him, gentlemen; a certain puritanical air always sticks to these ‘Boston folks’ even after they have turned rakes.”
“Oh! he would get over that too, quick enough,” cried the lover of France, “if he were to stay a year or two in Paris. But, upon my honour! I cannot stay for breakfast; Miss L*** would never speak to me again.”
“I thought you only cared for married women?” remarked the lawyer.
“Neither do I care for anybody else,” said the Frenchman; “but you know our girls, who have nothing to do but to walk Broadway in the forenoon, and to go to a party in the evening, govern society; and, if one does not wish to be considered an absolute boor, one must humour them.”
“Then you consider your civility a mere act of duty,—a sacrifice brought to society?”
“Precisely so; and in the same light it is viewed by Miss L***.”
“The d—l take your attention then! When I want to pay my court to a woman, I do not want to do so in public.”
“Miss L***, I assure you, courts nothing but satin velvet and gros de Naples. She will to-day, with her own soft hands, caress every piece of French silk which has passed the Hook for a week past; and I shall have the honour of accompanying her to every fashionable shop in Broadway.”
“Delightful occupation this!” exclaimed the lawyer; “I had rather read law.”
“Or drink juleps,” cried the Philadelphian.
“Or play cards,” said the New-Yorker.
“Or go to meeting,” added the Bostonian.
“You may do what you like; but Miss L*** is worth a hundred thousand dollars if she is worth a cent; and she has sworn never to marry, except an European or an American who has remained long enough in Europe to become civilized.”
“Delightful creature that!” cried the Bostonian: “then I presume I should stand no chance with her at all.”
“C’est selon. Vous êtes beau garçon, appartenez à une bonne famille; vous avez de quoi vivre: mais vous chiquez, et, surtout vous crachez, et Mademoiselle L*** ne pardonne nullement de pareils forfaits.”
Here the finished Parisian stepped before the looking-glass, tightened his cravat so as to give himself a colour, drew the pale emaciated fingers of his right hand a dozen times through his front hair, studied the most becoming position of his hat, arranged most tastefully two large curls which concealed the cavities of his temples, put on his French kid gloves, exercised himself in balancing a small switch,—which altogether did not take him more than thirty-five minutes,—and then left the room as if he had never known any one of its occupants.
“Clever fellow that!” exclaimed the Philadelphian: “spent all his father’s property in learning how to live, and is now marrying one of our richest girls.”
“Capital hit!” cried the Bostonian.
“Equal to a profession,” ejaculated the lawyer.
“Pray, what may your profession be worth a-year?” asked the New-Yorker.
“The profession is worth a great deal, but I myself get nothing by it,” replied the barrister.
“How long is it since you practised law?”
“Five years.”
“And how much did you make by it?”
“Twenty-five dollars, or thereabouts.”
“How much rent do you pay for your office?”
“One hundred dollars per annum.”
“And what do you give to the boy that sweeps it?”
“One dollar a month.”
“Why don’t you rather take him into partnership?”
“He would scorn the idea.”
“And how many lawyers like you are there in New York?” demanded my friend.
“Between three and four hundred, I suppose; most of them sons of our first citizens. All the law business is done by half-a-dozen vulgar upstarts who come here from the country, and whom the public, God knows why, is taking into favour. The profession of physic is a great deal better; the veriest humbug is making money by it.”
“Because dead people tell no tales, I presume?”
“Not so much for that, as because a physician often hits where he strikes at random; and because, when a physician is not doing well with his professional practice, he is always sure to make a respectable living by quackery.”
“Provided he has money enough to pay for advertising in the newspapers. But then physicians do not rank nearly as high in society as lawyers.”
“Neither should they: our profession is, par excellence, that of a gentleman.”
“And I can assure you,” interrupted the New-Yorker, “that, in this city, there is no higher rank in society than that ‘of a rich man.’ I would rather have the reputation of Mr. A*** than that of our learned chancellor K***.”
“So would I,” rejoined the lawyer. “Mr. A*** must now be ‘pretty considerably’ richer than Stephen Gerard ever was; and when a man is once rich, you know, he can do everything.”
“I believe myself,” said the New-Yorker, “that we are a ‘leetle’ too much given to money-making.”
“And that every person connected with trade is too easily admitted into our first society,” added the Philadelphian.
“In what other country,” exclaimed the Virginian, “would you see a parcel of drummers or clerks admitted into the company of statesmen and legislators?”
“In none,” interrupted my friend, “except where merchants and their agents hold a higher rank than statesmen and legislators; in which it is a disgrace to be a politician, and a reproach to be called a patriot.”
At this moment one of the waiters announced breakfast; which agreeable news put us all into the best possible humour, and, amid the hilarity excited by hock and champaign, we soon forgot fashions, politics, professions, and even the riches of this world.
While we had thus been wasting our time, a hundred ships had probably discharged their cargoes; a thousand emigrants from all parts of the globe had landed with big hearts and stout hopes to realise their dreams of the free and happy West. Many of them might have already commenced their peregrination towards the Mississippi, where their friends and relatives who preceded them were already clearing the wilderness, or enjoying the fruits of their labour. Fortunes might have been lost or won, merchants established or ruined, politicians raised or undone. Many an enterprising pioneer might have formed a plan for a new settlement; while hundreds of others were probably employed in transporting the produce of the fertilized West to the seaports of the Atlantic. Wealth and misery had perhaps been expected by thousands with the arrival of the mail or packet. Fathers might have been separated from their children,—husbands from their wives,—in the eager and universal quest of fortune, and many a heart left bleeding with the loss of all it held dear; while others, happier than these, might have greeted the unexpected return of their friends and relatives.
Is it not strange, thought I, before I had drunk the first glass of champaign, that in a country which more than any other convinces one of the vanity of human pursuits,—in which wealth, honour, and distinction are mere bubbles floating on the surface of society,—men should be more eager after aristocratic distinctions, than where these are founded on an historical basis, and in accordance with the customs of the people? Such, however, is the irony of Fate, inseparable from nations as from individuals.