_La Dame aux Camélias_, 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 shirt-front, and Caroline
Pettitoes wonders at "Mr. Düsseldorf's" industry?

If intelligent people decline to go, you justly remark, it is their own
fault. Yes, but if they stay away, it is very certainly their great
gain. The elderly people are always neglected with us, and nothing
surprises intelligent strangers more than the tyrannical supremacy of
Young America. But we are not surprised at this neglect. How can we be,
if we have our eyes open? When Caroline Pettitoes retreats from the
floor to the sofa, and, instead of a "polker," figures at parties as a
matron, do you suppose that "tough old Joes" like ourselves are going to
desert the young Caroline upon the floor, for Madame Pettitoes upon the
sofa? If the pretty young Caroline, with youth, health, freshness, a