indiscreet habits of conversation, a pernicious custom of
sneering at every body and every thing, inconsistent blending
of early Puritan and acquired Continental habits, occasional
fits of recklessness breaking through the routine of a
worldly-prudent life. The character is so evidently a
type--even if it were not designated as such in so many words,
more than once--that it is surprising it should ever have been
attributed to an individual--above all, to one who is never at
home but in two places--outside of a horse and inside of a
library. Most of the other characters are similarly types--that
is to say, they represent certain styles and varieties of men.
The fast boy of Young America (from whose diary Pensez-y gave
you a leaf last summer), whose great idea of life is dancing,
eating supper after dancing, and gambling after eating supper;
the older exquisite, without fortune enough to hurry
brilliantly on, who makes general gallantly his amusement and
occupation; the silent man, _blaze_ before thirty, and not to
be moved by any thing; (a variety of American much overlooked
by strangers, but existing in great perfection, both here and
at the south;) the beau of the 'second set,' dressy, vulgar and
good natured; these and others I have endeavored to depict.
Now, as every class is made up of individuals, every character
representing a class must resemble some of the individuals in
it, in some particulars; but if you undertook to attach to each
single character one and the same living representative, you
would soon find each of them, like Mrs. Malaprop's Cerberus,
'three gentlemen at once,' if not many more; and should one of
your 'country readers,' anxious to 'put the right names to
them,' address--not _one_, but _five_ or _six_--of his 'town
correspondents,' he would get answers about as harmonious as if
he had consulted the same number of German commentators on the
meaning of a disputed passage in a Greek tragedian. Some of the
personages are purely fanciful--for instance, Mr.
Harrison--such a man as never did exist, but I imagine might
very well exist, among us. But, as the development of these
characters is still in manuscript, it would be premature to say
more of them.

"Yet one word. The sketches were written entirely for the