Although we are not disposed to agree with the Chevalier de Crèvecœur, that “if there is a town on the American continent where English luxury displayed its follies, it was in New York,” Philadelphia, with Mrs. William Bingham as its social leader, having continued to assert its supremacy in this line, we are willing to believe that there was a fair amount of both folly and luxury in the national capital. This gentleman, Saint-John de Crèvecœur, sometime Consul-General at New York, was probably surprised to find anything approaching civilization in this city and country, as he exclaims, “You will find here the English fashions. In the dress of the women you will see the most brilliant silks, gauzes, hats, and borrowed hair.” It is amusing, in this connection, to note the French gentleman’s ideal of what a woman should be. He happened to be looking for a wife himself just then, and, like Solomon’s perfect woman, she was expected to look well to the ways of her household, to be skilled in the spinning of flax and the making of cheese and butter, and withal she was to have her mind cultivated a little, just enough to enable her to enjoy reading with her husband. Mrs. William Smith, a less prejudiced observer than M. de Crèvecœur, in writing to her mother of a dinner at Chief Justice Jay’s which was served _à la mode française_, says that there was more fashion and state in New York than she would fancy. Brissot de Warville speaks of another dinner, this one at the house of Cyrus Griffin, at which seven or eight women appeared dressed in great hats and plumes. If the hats were as graceful and becoming as that worn by Mrs. John Jay in her portrait by Pine, we have no word of censure for those old-time beauties, although a plumed hat does seem a rather peculiar finish to a dinner costume, almost as odd as Mrs. William Smith’s elbow-sleeves, bare arms, and muff.