s astounded, and Kitty
infinitely delighted. The pretty little thing confessed that she should
like to go every night, wondered what Horace Bright would think of it, and
whether he would dare venture alone to a play-house, should he happen to
come to York. In 1803 this country was still in the palmy state of
unsophistication. There were few, scarcely any, strolling players, and
none but those who visited the _cities_, properly so called, enjoyed
opportunities of witnessing the wonders of paint, patch and candle-light,
as auxiliary to the other wonders of the stage. Poor little Kitty! There
was a day, or two, during which the sock and buskin wrought their usual
effect on her female nature, and almost eclipsed the glories of Horace
Bright, in her own bright eyes.

I could not refrain from accompanying Marble's party to the museum. In
that day, this was a somewhat insignificant collection of curiosities, in
Greenwich Street, but it was a miracle to the aunt and niece. Even the
worthy Manhattanese were not altogether guiltless of esteeming it a
wonder, though the greater renown of the Philadelphia Museum kept this of
New York a little in the shade. I have often had occasion to remark that,
in this republic, the people in the country are a little less country, and
the people of the towns a good deal less town, than is apt to be the case
in great nations. The last is easily enough accounted for: the towns
having shot up so rapidly, and receiving their accessions of population
from classes not accustomed to town lives from childhood. Were a thousand
villages to be compressed into a single group of houses, their people
would long retain the notions, tastes and habits of villagers, though they
would form a large town in the aggregate. Such, in a measure, is still the
fact with our American towns; no one of them all having the air, tone or
appearance of a capital, while most of them would be paragons in the eyes
of such persons as old Mrs. Wetmore and her grand-daughter. Thus it was,
that the Greenwich Street Museum gave infinite satisfaction to these two
unsophisticated visitors. Kitty was most struck with certain villainous
wax-figures, works of art that were much on a level with certain similar
objects that were lately, if they are not now, exhibited for the benefit
of the Dean and Chapter of Westminster Abbey, above the tombs of the
Plantagenets, and almost in contact with that marvel of gothic art, Henry
VII's. chapel! It is