lieve that no
attempt to delineate ordinary American life, either on the stage, or
in the pages of a novel, has been rewarded with success. Even those
works in which the desire to illustrate a principle has been the aim,
when the picture has been brought within this homely frame, have had
to contend with disadvantages that have been commonly found
insurmountable. The latter being the intention of this book, the task
has been undertaken with a perfect consciousness of all its
difficulties, and with scarcely a hope of success. It would be indeed
a desperate undertaking, to think of making anything interesting in
the way of a _Roman de Societe_ in this country; still useful glances
may possibly be made even in that direction, and we trust that the
fidelity of one or two of our portraits will be recognized by the
looker-on, although they will very likely be denied by the sitters
themselves.

There seems to be a pervading principle in things, which gives an
accumulating energy to any active property that may happen to be in
the ascendant, at the time being.--Money produces money; knowledge is
the parent of knowledge; and ignorance fortifies ignorance.--In a
word, like begets like. The governing social evil of America is
provincialism; a misfortune that is perhaps inseparable from her
situation. Without a social capital, with twenty or more communities
divided by distance and political barriers, her people, who are
really more homogenous than any other of the same numbers in the
world perhaps, possess no standard for opinion, manners, social
maxims, or even language.

Every man, as a matter of course, refers to his own particular
experience, and praises or condemns agreeably to notions contracted
in the circle of his own habits, however narrow, provincial, or
erroneous they may happen to be. As a consequence, no useful stage
can exist; for the dramatist who should endeavour to delineate the
faults of society, would find a formidable party arrayed against him,
in a moment, with no party to defend. As another consequence, we see
individuals constantly assailed with a wolf-like ferocity, while
society is everywhere permitted to pass unscathed.

That the American nation is a great nation, in some particulars the
greatest the world ever saw, we hold to be true, and are as ready to
maintain as any one can be; but we are also equally ready to concede,
that it is very far behind most polished nations in various
essentials, and c