but what our wag facetiously termed "the best society."

If the reader doubts, let him consider its practical results in any
great emporium of "best society." Marriage is there regarded as a
luxury, too expensive for any but the sons of rich men, or fortunate
young men. We once heard an eminent divine assert, and only half in
sport, that the rate of living was advancing so incredibly, that
weddings in his experience were perceptibly diminishing. The reasons
might have been many and various. But we all acknowledge the fact. On
the other hand, and about the same time, a lovely damsel (ah!
Clorinda,) whose father was not wealthy, who had no prospective means
of support, who could do nothing but polka to perfection, who
literally knew almost nothing, and who constantly shocked every fairly
intelligent person by the glaring ignorance betrayed in her remarks,
informed a friend at one of the Saratoga balls, whither he had made
haste to meet "the best society," that there were "not more than three
good matches in society!" _La Dame aux Camelias_, 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