s, not witty, and a stream of
weary platitude, mortifying to every sensible person. Will any of our
Pendennis friends intermit their indignation for a moment, and consider
how many good things they have said or heard during the season? If Mr.
Potiphar's eyes should chance to fall here, will he reckon the amount of
satisfaction and enjoyment he derived from Mrs. Potiphar's ball, and
will that lady candidly confess what she gained from it beside weariness
and disgust? What eloquent sermons we remember to have heard in which
the sins and the sinners of Babylon, Jericho and Gomorrah were scathed
with holy indignation. The cloth is very hard upon Cain, and completely
routs the erring kings of Judah. The Spanish Inquisition, too, gets
frightful knocks, and there is much eloquent exhortation to preach the
gospel in the interior of Siam. Let it be preached there and God speed
the Word. But also let us have a text or two in Broadway and the Avenue.

The best sermon ever preached upon society, within our knowledge, is
_Vanity Fair_. Is the spirit of that story less true of New York than of
London? Probably we never see Amelia at our parties, nor Lieutenant
George Osborne, nor good gawky Dobbin, nor Mrs. Rebecca Sharp Crawley,
nor old Steyne. We are very much pained, of course, that any author
should take such dreary views of human nature. We, for our parts, all go
to Mrs. Potiphar's to refresh our faith in men and women. Generosity,
amiability, a catholic charity, simplicity, taste, sense, high
cultivation, and intelligence, distinguish our parties. The statesman
seeks their stimulating influence; the literary man, after the day's
labor, desires the repose of their elegant conversation; the
professional man and the merchant hurry up from down town to shuffle off
the coil of heavy duty, and forget the drudgery of life in the agreeable
picture of its amenities and graces presented by Mrs. Potiphar's ball.
Is this account of the matter, or _Vanity Fair_, the satire? What are
the prospects of any society of which that tale is the true history?

There is a picture in the Luxembourg gallery at Paris, _The Decadence of
the Romans_, which made the fame and fortune of Couture, the painter. It
represents an orgie in the court of a temple, during the last days of
Rome. A swarm of revellers occupy the middle of the picture, wreathed in
elaborate intricacy of luxurious posture, men and women intermingled;
their faces, in which the old Roman f