nobleman has
nothing to do? Who, in fine, evince by their collective conduct, that
they regard their Americanism as a misfortune, and are so the most
deadly enemies of their country? None but what our wag facetiously
termed "the best society."

If the reader doubts, let him consider its practical results in any
great emporiums of "best society." Marriage is there regarded as a
luxury, too expensive for any but the sons of rich men, or fortunate
young men. We once heard an eminent divine assert, and only half in
sport, that the rate of living was advancing so incredibly, that
weddings in his experience were perceptibly diminishing. The reasons
might have been many and various. But we all acknowledge the fact. On
the other hand, and about the same time, a lovely damsel (ah! Clorinda!)
whose father was not wealthy, who had no prospective means of support,
who could do nothing but polka to perfection, who literally knew almost
nothing, and who constantly shocked every fairly intelligent person by
the glaring ignorance betrayed in her remarks, informed a friend at one
of the Saratoga balls, whither he had made haste to meet "the best
society," that there were "not more than three good matches in society."
_La Dame aux Camelias_, Marie Duplessis, was to our fancy a much more
feminine, and admirable, and moral, and human person, than the adored
Clorinda. And yet what she said was the legitimate result of the state
of our fashionable society. It worships wealth, and the pomp which
wealth can purchase, more than virtue, genius or beauty. We may be told
that it has always been so in every country, and that the fine society
of all lands is as profuse and flashy as our own. We deny it, flatly.
Neither English, nor French, nor Italian, nor German society, is so
unspeakably barren as that which is technically called "society" here.
In London, and Paris, and Vienna, and Rome, all the really eminent men
and women help make up the mass of society. A party is not a mere ball,
but it is a congress of the wit, beauty, and fame of the capital. It is
worth while to dress, if you shall meet Macaulay, or Hallam, or Guizot,
or Thiers, or Landseer, or Delaroche--Mrs. Norton, the Misses Berry,
Madame Recamier, and all the brilliant women and famous foreigners. But
why should we desert the pleasant pages of those men, and the recorded
gossip of those women, to be squeezed flat against a wall, while young
Doughface pours oyster-gravy down our shir