Liancourt as early as 1796. The extravagance, or what economical Europeans thought extravagance, with which American women were allowed and encouraged to spend money, was as notorious in 1790 as a century later; the recklessness with which Americans often risked their money, and the liberality with which they used it, were marked even then, in comparison with the ordinary European habit. Europeans saw such contradictions, but made no attempt to reconcile them. No foreigner of that day--neither poet, painter, nor philosopher--could detect in American life anything higher than vulgarity; for it was something beyond the range of their experience, which education and culture had not framed a formula to express. Moore came to Washington, and found there no loftier inspiration than any Federalist rhymester of Dennie’s school. “Take Christians, Mohawks, democrats and all, From the rude wigwam to the Congress hall,-- From man the savage, whether slaved or free, To man the civilized, less tame than he: ’Tis one dull chaos, one unfertile strife Betwixt half-polished and half-barbarous life; Where every ill the ancient world can brew Is mixed with every grossness of the new; Where all corrupts, though little can entice, And nothing’s known of luxury but vice.” Moore’s two small volumes of Epistles, printed in 1807, contained much more so-called poetry of the same tone,--poetry more polished and less respectable than that of Barlow and Dwight; while, as though to prove that the Old World knew what grossness was, he embalmed in his lines the slanders which the Scotch libeller Callender invented against Jefferson:-- “The weary statesman for repose hath fled From halls of council to his negro’s shed; Where, blest, he woos some black Aspasia’s grace, And dreams of freedom in his slave’s embrace.” To leave no doubt of his meaning, he explained in a footnote that his allusion was to the President of the United States; and yet even Moore, trifler and butterfly as he was, must have seen, if he would, that between the morals of politics and society in America and those then prevailing in Europe, there was no room for comparison,--there was room only for contrast.