nk, nerves the soul's courage quite as
much as the alluring mirage of the happy heights we may attain. "To
hold the mirror up to Nature," is still the most potent method of
shaming sin and strengthening virtue.

If _Vanity Fair_ be a satire, what novel of society is not? Are _Vivian
Grey_, and _Pelham_, and the long catalogue of books illustrating
English, or the host of Balzacs, Sands, Sues, and Dumas, that paint
French society, less satires? Nay, if you should catch any dandy in
Broadway, or in Pall-Mall, or upon the Boulevards, this very morning,
and write a coldly true history of his life and actions, his doings and
undoings, would it not be the most scathing and tremendous satire?--if
by satire you mean the consuming melancholy of the conviction that the
life of that pendant to a mustache is an insult to the possible life of
a man.

We have read of a hypocrisy so thorough, that it was surprised you
should think it hypocritical: and we have bitterly thought of the
saying, when hearing one mother say of another mother's child, that she
had "made a good match," because the girl was betrothed to a stupid boy
whose father was rich. The remark was the key of our social feeling.

Let us look at it a little, and, first of all, let the reader consider
the criticism, and not the critic. We may like very well, in our
individual capacity, to partake of the delicacies prepared by our
hostess's _chef_, we may not be averse to _pate_ and myriad _objets de
gout_, and if you caught us in a corner at the next ball, putting away a
fair share of _dinde aux truffes_, we know you would have at us in a
tone of great moral indignation, and wish to know why we sneaked into
great houses, eating good suppers, and drinking choice wines, and then
went away with an indigestion, to write dyspeptic disgusts at society.

We might reply that it is necessary to know something of a subject
before writing about it, and that if a man wished to describe the habits
of South Sea Islanders, it is useless to go to Greenland; we might also
confess a partiality for _pate_, and a tenderness for _truffes_, and
acknowledge that, considering our single absence would not put down
extravagant, pompous parties, we were not strong enough to let the
morsels drop into unappreciating mouths; or we might say, that if a man
invited us to see his new house, it would not be ungracious nor
insulting to his hospitality, to point out whatever weak parts we might
detect in