d the Wistar parties;-for geological section
of social strata, go to The Club.--Good place to live in,--first-rate
market,--tip-top peaches.--What do we know about Philadelphia, except
that the engine-companies are always shooting each other?

And what do you say to New York?--asked the Koh-i-noor.

A great city, Sir,--replied the Little Gentleman,--a very opulent,
splendid city. A point of transit of much that is remarkable, and of
permanence for much that is respectable. A great money-centre. San
Francisco with the mines above-ground,--and some of 'em under the
sidewalks. I have seen next to nothing grandiose, out of New York, in
all our cities. It makes 'em all look paltry and petty. Has many
elements of civilization. May stop where Venice did, though, for aught
we know.--The order of its development is just this:--Wealth;
architecture; upholstery; painting; sculpture. Printing, as a mechanical
art,--just as Nicholas Jepson and the Aldi, who were scholars too, made
Venice renowned for it. Journalism, which is the accident of business
and crowded populations, in great perfection. Venice got as far as Titian
and Paul Veronese and Tintoretto,--great colorists, mark you, magnificent
on the flesh-and-blood side of Art,--but look over to Florence and see
who lie in Santa Crocea, and ask out of whose loins Dante sprung!

Oh, yes, to be sure, Venice built her Ducal Palace, and her Church of St.
Mark, and her Casa d' Or, and the rest of her golden houses; and Venice
had great pictures and good music; and Venice had a Golden Book, in which
all the large tax-payers had their names written;--but all that did not
make Venice the brain of Italy.

I tell you what, Sir,--with all these magnificent appliances of
civilization, it is time we began to hear something from the djinnis
donee whose names are on the Golden Book of our sumptuous, splendid,
marble-placed Venice,--something in the higher walks of literature,
--something in the councils of the nation. Plenty of Art, I grant you,
Sir; now, then, for vast libraries, and for mighty scholars and thinkers
and statesmen,--five for every Boston one, as the population is to
ours,--ten to one more properly, in virtue of centralizing attraction as
the alleged metropolis, and not call our people provincials, and have to
come begging to us to write the lives of Hendrik Hudson and Gouverneur
Morris!

--The Little Gentleman was on his hobby, exalting his own city at the
expense