oible is a love of flounces, cousin Jack, and you have
drawn that image from your eye, instead of your imagination. It is a
French, as well as an American ambition, if ambition it be."

"Let it be drawn whence it may, it is true. Have you not remarked,
Sir George Templemore, that the Americans will not even bear the
ascendency of a capital? Formerly, Philadelphia, then the largest
town in the country, was the political capital; but it was too much
for any one community to enjoy the united consideration that belongs
to extent and politics; and so the honest public went to work to make
a capital, that should have nothing else in its favour, but the naked
fact that it was the seat of government, and I think it will be
generally allowed, that they have succeeded to admiration. I fancy
Mr. Dodge will admit that it would be quite intolerable, that country
should not be town, and town country."

"This is a land of equal rights, Mr. John Effingham, and I confess
that I see no claims that New-York possesses, which does not equally
belong to Templeton."

"Do you hold, sir," inquired Captain Truck, "that a ship is a brig,
and a brig a ship."

"The case is different; Templeton _is_ a town, is it not, Mr. John
Effingham?"

"_A_ town, Mr. Dodge, but not town. The difference is essential."

"I do not see it, sir. Now, New-York, to my notion is not a _town_,
but a _city_."

"Ah! This is the critical acumen of the editor! But you should be
indulgent, Mr. Dodge, to us laymen, who pick up our phrases by merely
wandering about the world; or in the nursery perhaps, while you, of
the favoured few, by living in the condensation of a province, obtain
a precision and accuracy to which we can lay no claim."

The darkness prevented the editor of the Active Inquirer from
detecting the general smile, and he remained in happy ignorance of
the feeling that produced it. To say the truth, not the smallest of
the besetting vices of Mr. Dodge had their foundation in a provincial
education, and in provincial notions; the invariable tendency of both
being to persuade their subject that he is always right, while all
opposed to him in opinion are wrong. That well-known line of Pope, in
which the poet asks, "what can we reason, but from what we know?"
contains the principle of half our foibles and faults, and perhaps
explains fully that proportion of those of Mr. Dodge, to say nothing
of those of no small number of his countrymen. There are limits t