and cultivation. They are the "best society" of New York, of Boston,
of Baltimore, of St. Louis, of New Orleans, whether they live upon six
hundred or sixty thousand dollars a year--whether they inhabit
princely houses in fashionable streets (which they often do), or
not--whether their sons have graduated at Celarius' and the _Jardin
Mabille_, or have never been out of their fathers' shops--whether
they have "air" and "style," and are "so gentlemanly" and "so
aristocratic," or not. Your shoemaker, your lawyer, your butcher, your
clergyman--if they are simple and steady, and, whether rich or poor,
are unseduced by the sirens of extravagance and ruinous display, help
make up the "best society." For that mystic communion is not composed
of the rich, but of the worthy; and is "best" by its virtues, and not
by its vices. When Johnson, Burke, Goldsmith, Garrick, Reynolds, and
their friends, met at supper in Goldsmith's rooms, where was the "best
society" in England? When George the Fourth outraged humanity and
decency in his treatment of Queen Caroline, who was the first
scoundrel in Europe?

Pause yet a moment, indignant friend. Whose habits and principles
would ruin this country as rapidly as it has been made? Who are
enamored of a puerile imitation of foreign splendors? Who strenuously
endeavor to graft the questionable points of Parisian society upon our
own? Who pass a few years in Europe, and return skeptical of
republicanism and human improvement, longing and sighing for more
sharply emphasised social distinctions? Who squander with profuse
recklessness the hard-earned fortunes of their sires? Who diligently
devote their time to nothing, foolishly and wrongly supposing that a
young English nobleman has nothing to do? Who, in fine, evince by
their collective conduct, that they regard their Americanism as a
misfortune, and are so the most deadly enemies of their country? None