education or intelligence
or usefulness are ever encountered here; and if occasionally
some little sketch of domestic happiness or private worth
should be given, you will attribute it to my own inadvertence,
or set it down as a result of English education. As I shall be
describing a class, and not individuals, it will of course be
perfectly proper for me to narrate any little incidents of
private life which I may have heard; and persons interested
will (or at least ought to) bear in mind, if my letters are
ever read by themselves or talked of by their acquaintances,
that I am not alluding to them in the slightest degree, but
merely to the class to which they belong. They therefore (it is
to be hoped) will not arrogate to themselves any little
passages of private histories they may happen to find in these
pages; for, if they do, I shall assuredly hold them up to
public ridicule, by saying, "as the shoe fits them they are
welcome to wear it."

I doubt not that these humble efforts of mine will commend
themselves to your favorable notice. They are (as you will
perceive from this letter) an unpretending mite given to aid in
elevating us in the eyes of the foreign literary world.
"_Pulchrum est bene facere reipublicae; etiam bene dicere haud
absurdum est._" Deeming it to be the duty of every American
thus to give his aid to so patriotic a cause, I have the honor
to be your most obedient servant,

FRANK MANHATTAN, Jun.

MR. ASHBURNER IN NEW-YORK.

The philosophy of Mr. Harry Benson (on the occasion when Mr. Harry
Benson was last before the public), like the philosophy of many other
eminent men, silenced his auditors if it did not convince them. Karl
Benson growled out something about its being well enough to say so now,
and seemed rather annoyed that Harry should have been more philosophical
than he was himself; while Ashburner laughed good-naturedly, and said
that _that_ was very good philosophy, and he liked to hear it. The
reader will remember that the occasion and philosophy to which we allude
were, respectively, the dinner at Mr. Karl Benson's, and a conversation
in which Mr. Harry Benson expressed it as his decided opinion that
living in a country where one could eat woodcock and drink claret
without having to pay very high taxes or do any hard work,