[43] When we arrived in America, we brought letters of introduction to several persons in New York: many were civil enough to call upon us: we were invited out to sundry parties, and were introduced into what is there called the first society. I do not wish to enter into any description of it, but will only say that I was most disagreeably astonished; and had it been my fate to have passed through the country as rapidly as most travellers do, I should have carried away a very unfavourable impression of the _best_ society of New York. Fortunately, however, for me, my visits were repeated, and my stay prolonged; and, in the course of time, I became acquainted with many individuals whose manners and acquirements were of a high order, and from whose intercourse I derived the greatest gratification. But they generally did me the favour to visit me; and I still could not imagine how it happened that I never met them at the parties to which I was invited, and in the circles where I visited. I soon discovered that they formed a society among themselves, where all those qualities which I had looked for among the self-styled _best_ were to be found. When I name Miss Sedgwick, Halleck, Irving, Bryant, Paulding, and some of less fame, but whose acquirements rendered their companionship delightful indeed, amongst whom I felt proud and happy to find several of my own name, it will no longer appear singular that they should feel too well satisfied with the resources of their own society, either to mingle in that of the vulgar _fashionables_, or seek with avidity the acquaintance of every stranger that arrives in New York. It is not to be wondered at that foreigners have spoken as they have of what is termed fashionable society here, or have condemned, with unqualified censure, the manners and tone prevailing in it. Their condemnations are true and just as regards what they see; nor, perhaps, would they be much inclined to moderate them when they found that persons possessing every quality that can render intercourse between rational creatures desirable were held in light esteem, and neglected, as either bores, blues, or dowdies, by those so infinitely their inferiors in every worthy accomplishment. The same separation, or, if any thing, a still stronger one, subsists in Philadelphia between the self-styled fashionables and the really good society. The distinction there is really of a nature perfectly ludicrous. A friend of mine was describing to me a family whose manners were unexceptionable and whose mental accomplishments were of a high order: upon my expressing some surprise that I had never met with them, my informant replied, "Oh, no, they are not received by the Chestnut Street _set_." If I were called upon to define that society in New York and Philadelphia which ranks (by right of self-arrogation) as first and best, I should say it is a purely dancing society, where a fiddle is indispensable to keep its members awake; and where their brains and