to speak, Nature stops them with a fat oyster, or offers a slice
of the breast of your divine bird, and silences all your aspirations.

And what of Philadelphia?--said the Marylander.

Oh, Philadelphia?--Waterworks,--killed by the Croton and Cochituate;--
Ben Franklin,--borrowed from Boston;--David Rittenhouse,--made an
orrery;--Benjamin Rush,--made a medical system:--both interesting to
antiquarians;--great Red-river raft of medical students,--spontaneous
generation of professors to match;--more widely known through the
Moyamensing hose-company, and the Wistar parties;--for geological
section of social strata, go to _The Club_.--Good place to live
in,--first-rate market,--tip-top peaches.--What do we know about
Philadelphia, except that the engine-companies are always shooting each
other?

And what do you say to New York?--asked the Koh-i-noor?

A great city, Sir,--replied Little Boston,--a very opulent, splendid
city. A point of transit of much that is remarkable, and of permanence
for much that is respectable. A great money-centre. San Francisco with
the mines above-ground,--and some of 'em under the sidewalks. I have
seen next to nothing _grandiose_, out of New York, in all our cities. It
makes 'em all look paltry and petty. Has many elements of civilization.
May stop where Venice did, though, for aught we know.--The order of its
development is just this:--Wealth; architecture; upholstery; painting;
sculpture. Printing, as a mechanical art,--just as Nicholas Jenson
and the Aldi, who were scholars too, made Venice renowned for it.
Journalism, which is the accident of business and crowded populations,
in great perfection. Venice got as far as Titian and Paul Veronese
and Tintoretto,--great colorists, mark you, magnificent on the
flesh-and-blood side of Art,--but look over to Florence and see who lie
in Santa Croce, and ask out of whose loins Dante sprung!

Oh, yes, to be sure, Venice built her Ducal Palace, and her Church of
St. Mark, and her Casa d' Oro, and the rest of her golden houses; and
Venice had great pictures and good music; and Venice had a Golden Book,
in which all the large tax-payers had their names written;--but all
that did not make Venice the brain of Italy.

I tell you what, Sir,--with all these magnificent appliances of
civilization, it is time we began to hear something from the _jeunesse
doree_ whose names are on the Golden Book of our sumptuous,
splendid, marble-palaced Venice,--something