Colonel ---- came in after tea, and took my father off to the Bowery theatre. I remained with D----, singing and stitching, and gossiping till twelve o'clock. My father has been introduced to half the town, and tells me that far from the democratic _Mister_, which he expected to be every man's title here, he had made the acquaintance of a score of municipal dignitaries, and some sixty colonels and major generals--of militia. Their omnibuses are vehicles of rank, and the _Ladies_ Washington, Clinton, and Van Rensalear,[2] rattle their crazy bones along the pavement for all the world like any other old women of quality. These democrats are as title-sick as a banker's wife in England. My father told me to-day, that Mr. ----, talking about the state of the country, spoke of the lower orders finding their level: now this enchants me, because a republic is a natural anomaly; there is nothing republican in the construction of the material universe; there be highlands and lowlands, lordly mountains as barren as any aristocracy, and lowly valleys as productive as any labouring classes. The feeling of rank, of inequality, is inherent in us, a part of the veneration of our natures; and like most of our properties seldom finds its right channels--in place of which it has created artificial ones suited to the frame of society into which the civilised world has formed itself. I believe in my heart that a republic is the noblest, highest, and purest form of government; but I believe that, according to the present disposition of human creatures, 'tis a mere beau ideal, totally incapable of realisation. What the world may be fit for six hundred years hence, I cannot exactly perceive; but in the mean time, 'tis my conviction that America will be a monarchy before I am a skeleton.