There is a tendency, at the present time, to court change for its own sake. This is erroneously termed a love of reform. Something very like a revolution is going on in our midst, while there is much reason to apprehend that few real grievances are abated; the spurious too exclusively occupying the popular mind, to render easy a just distinction between them. When an American prates about aristocracy, it is pretty safe to set him down as knavish or ignorant. It is purely cant; and the declaimers would be puzzled to point to a single element of the little understood and much decried institution, the country being absolutely without any, unless the enjoyment of the ordinary rights of property can be so considered. But the demagogue must have his war-cry as well as the Indian; and it is probable he will continue to whoop as long as the country contains minds weak enough to furnish him with dupes. COOPERSTOWN, _March 12, 1850_. [Illustration] THE WAYS OF THE HOUR. ----------------------- CHAPTER I. _Mar._ My lord Aumerle, is Harry Hereford armed? _Aum._ Yea, at all points; and longs to enter in. _King Richard II._ In one respect, there is a visible improvement in the goodly town of Manhattan, and that is in its architecture. Of its growth, there has never been any question, while many have disputed its pretension to improvement. A vast expansion of mediocrity, though useful and imposing, rarely satisfies either the judgment or the taste; those who possess these qualities, requiring a nearer approach to what is excellent, than can ever be found beneath the term just mentioned.