splendor that thirty feet front can afford. They are hot, and crowded,
and glaring. There is a little weak scandal, venomous, not witty, and
a stream of weary platitude, mortifying to every sensible person.
Will any of our Pendennis friends intermit their indignation for a
moment, and consider how many good things they have said or heard
during the season? If Mr. Potiphar's eyes should chance to fall here,
will he reckon the amount of satisfaction and enjoyment he derived
from Mrs. Potiphar's ball, and will that lady candidly confess what
she gained from it besides weariness and disgust? What eloquent
sermons we remember to have heard in which the sins and the sinners of
Babylon, Jericho and Gomorrah were scathed with holy indignation. The
cloth is very hard upon Cain, and completely routs the erring kings of
Judah. The Spanish Inquisition, too, gets frightful knocks, and there
is much eloquent exhortation to preach the gospel in the interior of
Siam. Let it be preached there, and God speed the word. But also let
us have a text or two in Broadway and the Avenue.

The best sermon ever preached upon society, within our knowledge, is
"Vanity Fair." Is the spirit of that story less true of New York than
of London? Probably we never see Amelia at our parties, nor
Lieutenant George Osborne, nor good gawky Dobbin, nor Mrs. Rebecca
Sharp Crawley, nor old Steyne. We are very much pained, of course,
that any author should take such dreary views of human nature. We,
for our parts, all go to Mrs. Potiphar's to refresh our faith in men
and women. Generosity, amiability, a catholic charity, simplicity,
taste, sense, high cultivation, and intelligence, distinguish our
parties. The statesman seeks their stimulating influence; the literary
man, after the day's labour, desires the repose of their elegant
conversation; the professional man and the merchant hurry up from down
town to shuffle off the coil of heavy duty, and forget the drudgery of