MID elaborate ceremonials attending the reception and inauguration of the first President of the Republic, we find some homely touches of nature, as when those two admirable housewives Mrs. Washington and Mrs. Adams were detained at home, in April and May, 1789, by domestic duties, and so missed all the joyful demonstrations along the route, as well as the brave welcome accorded their distinguished husbands in the city of New York. Mrs. Washington was busied in putting her household in order, and shipping china, cut glass, silver-ware, and linen from Mount Vernon to the capital, while from John Adams’s letters we gather that the wife, whom he so trusted that he permitted her to dispose of sheep, cows, and other live-stock, on her own responsibility, was attending to such matters at Braintree, Massachusetts, prior to the removal of her household goods to the fine country-place at Richmond Hill that Mr. Adams had rented for the season.[10]
Although Mr. Samuel Breck, recently arrived from Europe, found New York in 1787 “a poor town, with about twenty-three thousand people, not yet recovered from its Revolutionary wounds” and the great fire that swept over its western portion, he is pleased, two years later, to admire the improvements recently made, especially some beautiful houses built on Broadway by Mr. Macomb, one of which was occupied by General Knox, the Secretary of War. As soon as it transpired that New York was to be the meeting-place of the new Congress, and that General Washington was elected President, the selection of a suitable residence for the Chief Magistrate became a matter of considerable interest in Republican circles. The President later occupied Mr. Macomb’s house on Broadway near Bowling Green, subsequently known as the Mansion House and Bunker’s Hotel; but his first residence was the house of Walter Franklin, as is proved by a letter written from New York, April 30, 1789, which with other family papers furnishes us some interesting facts relating to this old homestead, and its renovation preparatory to the advent of the President and his wife, that have not yet appeared in the histories of the time. The clever chronicler is Mrs. William T. Robinson, and the letter is addressed to Miss Kitty Wistar, of Brandywine, afterwards Mrs. Sharples, through the courtesy of whose descendants it has come into the writer’s hands.
“Great rejoicing in New York,” she says, “on the arrival of General Washington. An elegant Barge decorated with an awning of Sattin, 12 oarsmen drest in white frocks and blue ribbons, went down to E. Town [Elizabeth] last fourth day to bring him up. A Stage was erected at the Coffee House wharf covered with a carpet for him to step on, where a company of light horse, one of Artillery, and most of the Inhabitants were waiting to receive him.[11] They Paraded through Queen Street in great form, while the music, the Drums and ringing of bells were enough to stun one with the noise. Previous to his coming Uncle Walter’s house in Cherry Street was taken for him and every room furnished in the most elegant manner.
“The evening after his Excellency’s arrival a general Illumination took place, excepting among Friends, and those styled Anti-Federalists: the latter’s windows suffered some, thou may imagine. As soon as the General has sworn in, a grand exhibition of fire-works is to be displayed, which it is expected will be to-morrow. There is scarcely anything talked of now but General Washington and the Palace.”
The palace referred to is, evidently, the former residence of Walter Franklin, situated at the corner of Pearl and Cherry Streets, then owned by his widow, who had married Mr. Samuel Osgood, Postmaster-General under the new administration. Watson says that the Franklin House on Pearl Street was “No. 1 in pre-eminence,” and, from the wealth and position of its owner, it was evidently considered the best in the city for the purpose. Mrs. Robinson describes it as having been very sumptuously fitted up; and so it doubtless was, according to the prevailing idea of elegance. Miss Wistar’s correspondent adds
“Thou must know that Uncle Osgood and Duer were appointed to procure a house and furnish it; accordingly they pitched on their wives as being likely to do it better. Aunt Osgood and Lady Kitty Duer had the whole management of it. I went the morning before the General’s arrival to look at it. The house really did honour to my Aunt and Lady Kitty, they spared no pains nor expense in it. I have not done yet, my dear, is thee not almost tired? The best of furniture in every room, and the greatest quantity of plate and China that I ever saw before. The whole of the first and second Story is papered, and the floor covered with the richest kind of Turkey and Wilton Carpets.”
The Mr. Duer spoken of by Mrs. Robinson is Colonel William Duer, who had early in life been aide-de-camp to Lord Clive in India, and who later held important positions under the Federal government. His wife was one of the daughters of General William Alexander, claimant to the Scottish earldom of Stirling. She consequently figured in New York society as Lady Kitty Duer, giving, with her own sister, Lady Mary Watts, and Lady Temple, a flavor of British aristocracy to republican circles. Lady Kitty is described by John Quincy Adams as “one of the sweetest-looking women in the city,”—which testimony is scarcely corroborated by her portrait in the exaggerated coiffure of the day.
Walter Franklin’s house on Cherry Street, and that of his brother Samuel, which was around the corner on Pearl Street, were both near the shipping quarter of the town, in which respect they resembled fashionable Philadelphia residences of the same period. A number of interesting family traditions cluster about these fine old houses, in which a bevy of gay girls was gathered together, who charmed the British officers during their occupation of the city, just as their Quaker sisters were doing in old Philadelphia. Some of the officers were quartered on the Franklins, among them Lord Rawdon and Admiral Lord Richard Howe, who respectively commanded the army and the fleet. Sally Franklin, the writer of the letter from which we have quoted, was then a young girl, and a very beautiful one. Her marriage with Mr. Robinson took place while the British had possession of New York. She was evidently a great favorite with the officers in command, who begged to be permitted to attend her wedding in Quaker meeting. This request was refused, on the plea that the wedding was to be a very quiet one. British officers, as Miss Rebecca Franks has informed us, were not accustomed to take no for an answer, unless accompanied with shot and shell. Accordingly, on the morning of the marriage, when the beautiful bride, in her white silk dress and white bonnet, stood in the quaint old meeting, listening to the words of her lover, “I take this Friend, Sarah Franklin, to be my wedded wife,” a sudden sound of footsteps and clattering of swords against the benches was heard, and, lo! Lord Rawdon, Lord Howe, and a train of young officers, resplendent in gay uniforms and gold lace, stood within the solemn enclosure of the meeting. They seated themselves, with malice aforethought, on a long bench opposite the bride, whose turn had now come to speak. Trembling, and carefully avoiding the eyes of the strangers, who had vowed that they would make her smile in the midst of the ceremony, she performed her part, declaring her intention to take Friend William to be her wedded husband. When the marriage certificate was signed, the names of Lord Howe, Lord Rawdon, and the other officers were appended, beautiful Sarah Robinson showing her forgiving spirit still further by allowing those, among the intruders, who were well known to her to return to the house and partake of the wedding-feast.
The New York girls had a longer time in which to enjoy the society of the gallant red-coats than their Philadelphia sisters, and were consequently in greater danger of losing their hearts to them. There were some marriages with British officers, as in the family of Andrew Elliot, Lieutenant-Governor of New York, one of whose daughters married Admiral Robert Digby, while another, Elizabeth, became the wife of William, tenth Baron and first Earl of Cathcart, the same who as Lord Cathcart had figured as chief of the Knights of the Blended Rose in the Meschianza.[12] Miss Philipse was also one of those who yielded to the attractions of the enemy, as she married the Hon. Lionel Smythe, son of Philip, fourth Viscount Strafford, at the time captain of the Twenty-Third British Foot. Most of the New York belles had, as Graydon puts it, “sufficient toleration for our cause to marry officers of the Continental army,” and when the new administration came in, we find them as ready to dance to Whig music as they had been to Tory. The Comte de Moustier soon gave these impartial fair ones an opportunity to display their Terpsichorean powers at a very elegant ball, given to President Washington, two weeks after his inauguration, at the Macomb house, on Broadway, which was afterwards occupied by President Washington. On this occasion the alliance between France and America was represented in a cotillon, half the dancers being in French costume and the other half in American; the ladies who represented France wearing red roses and flowers of France, and the American ladies blue ribbons and American flowers. Mr. Elias Boudinot, chairman of the committee of Congress, in a description of this ball sent to his wife in Philadelphia, speaks of these representatives of the allied powers entering the room, two by two, and engaging in what he ingeniously calls “a most curious dance, called en ballet, to show the happy union between the two nations.”[13]
The Comte de Moustier had succeeded Barbé-Marbois as French minister to the United States, and was so addicted to entertaining that he was wont to say that he was “but a tavern-keeper;” adding, facetiously, that “the Americans had the complaisance not to demand his recall.”[14] Of the new ambassador Mr. Madison wrote to Mr. Jefferson, in Paris, “It is with much pleasure I inform you that Moustier begins to make himself acceptable; and with still more that Madame Bréhan begins to be viewed in the light which I hope she merits.” This lady was Anne-Flore Millet, Marquise de Bréhan, a sister of the Comte de Moustier, who assisted him in doing the honors of his house. She is described as a singular, whimsical old woman, who delighted in playing with a negro child and caressing a monkey. With all her eccentricities, she seems to have been possessed of some talent and considerable skill as an artist, as she not only executed several portraits of Washington, but achieved a feat known to few portrait-painters, that of pleasing the sitter himself.
About a week before the Comte de Moustier’s entertainment, the inauguration ball was held, and, if we are to credit contemporaneous gossip, was a very grand and imposing function. Although those were days of stage-coaching and slow travel, a number of visitors from other cities were in New York, as appears from a letter written by Miss Bertha Ingersoll, from the scene of the festivities, to Miss Sallie McKean in Philadelphia.
“We shall remain here,” she writes, “even if we have to sleep in tents, as so many will have to do. Mr. Williamson had promised to engage us rooms at Frauncis’s, but that was jammed long ago, as was every other decent public house, and now while we are waiting at Mrs. Vandervoort’s, in Maiden Lane, till after dinner, two of our beaux are running about town determined to obtain the best places for us to stay at which can be opened for love or money or the most persuasive speeches.”
Mrs. Washington was still at Mount Vernon on the 7th of May, the date of the inauguration ball,[15] consequently the story of a sofa raised some steps above the floor of the ball-room for the accommodation of the President and his wife during the dancing is quite without foundation, as is the equally absurd story of portly Mrs. Knox pushing her way up to this circle and having to descend suddenly from her elevated position because there was no room for her on the platform. Even if there was no dais for the President and his wife, there was no lack of form and ceremony at this Republican entertainment, where the men all wore the small-clothes of the day, which so well became their stately proportions, and where, says Huntingdon, many powdered heads were still to be seen, among men as well as women. The President’s costume on such occasions was a full suit of black velvet, with long black silk stockings, white vest, silver knee- and shoe-buckles, the hair being powdered and gathered together at the back in a black silk bag tied with a bow of black ribbon. He wore a light dress sword, with a richly-ornamented hilt, and often carried in his hand a cocked hat, decorated with the American cockade. The Vice-President, John Adams, wore a full suit of drab, with bag-wig and wrist-ruffles. The gentlemen’s laces seem to have rivalled those of the ladies, although in their costumes rich silks, satins, and brocades had begun to give place to cloth of various colors, as if to forecast the less ornate masculine costume of later date.
“The collection of ladies” at this ball, writes a contemporary, “was numerous and brilliant, and they were dressed with consummate taste and elegance. The number of persons present was upwards of three hundred, and satisfaction, vivacity, and delight beamed from every countenance.” Colonel William Leet Stone, of New York, thus describes one of the costumes: “It was a plain celestial blue satin gown, with a white satin petticoat. On the neck was worn a very large Italian gauze handkerchief, with border stripes of satin. The head-dress was a pouf of satin in the form of a globe, the créneaux or head-piece of which was composed of white satin, having a double wing in large pleats and trimmed with a wreath of artificial roses. The hair was dressed all over in detached curls, four of which in two ranks fell on each side of the neck and were relieved behind by a floating chignon.” We have Colonel Stone’s word for it that this was an attractive costume, although the description does not sound so to modern ears, especially with the heavy head decorations. It appears, however, that the ladies of the first administration had made one important departure, for which thanksgivings should have been devoutly uttered. They had by this time renounced the ungainly head-dress that had reared its pyramid skyward for some years, and which, accompanied as it was with scant drapery about the shoulders and bust, had led some wit of the day to accuse the fair ones of robbing their breasts of gauze, cambric, and muslin for the use of their heads, while another satirist wrote,—
“Give Chloe a bushel of horse-hair and wool,
Of paste and pomatum a pound;
Ten yards of gay ribbon to deck her sweet skull,
And gauze to encompass it round.”
Perhaps some such witticisms as these had led to the change of fashion; or, more likely, a little bird from France had whispered in the ladies’ ears that the mighty pyramid had fallen there. From whatever cause, the structure of hair, flowers, feathers, and jewels no longer reared its imposing pinnacle above the brow of beauty, and many of the Stuart, Malbone, Trumbull, and Copley paintings of women of this period represent the hair dressed low, with curls and bandeaux à la Grecque or rolled moderately high à la Pompadour.
In one of the journals of the day we read that
“On Thursday evening, the subscribers of the Dancing Assembly, gave an elegant Ball and Entertainment. The President of the United States, was pleased to honor the company with his presence—His Excellency the Vice President—most of the members of both Houses of Congress—His Excellency the Governor [Clinton] and a great many other dignified public characters: His Excellency Count de Moustier—His Most Christian Majesty’s Ambassador—The Baron Steuben, and other foreigners of distinction were present, as well as the most beautiful ladies of New York.”[16]
Among these were the Misses Livingston, one of whom married Mr. Ridley, of Baltimore, the Misses Van Horne, “avowed Whigs,” says Graydon, “notwithstanding their civility to the British officers,” and the Misses White, who lived on Wall Street near Broadway, to one of whom was addressed the following epigram by a beau of the period named Brown:
“My lovely maid, I’ve often thought
Whether thy name be just or not;
Thy bosom is as cold as snow,
Which we for matchless white may show;
But when thy beauteous face is seen,
Thou’rt of brunettes the charming queen.
Resolve our doubts: let it be known
Thou rather art inclined to Brown.”
It is evident that this fair White did not permanently incline to Brown, as one sister became Lady Hayes, and the other married one of the Monroes. Here also, in goodly array, were Osgoods, Philipses, Rutherfurds, Van Cortlandts, Van Zandts, Clintons, Montgomerys, De Lanceys, De Peysters, Kissams, Bleeckers, Clarksons, Verplancks, Schuylers, Van Rensselaers, and Macombs. How the old names repeat themselves in the social life of to-day! Prominent in these inaugural festivities were the Livingstons of Clermont, Chief Justice Yates, of New York, the handsome soldierly figure of Morgan Lewis, Grand Marshal of the Inauguration ceremonies, Mrs. Dominick Lynch, Mrs. Edgar, Mrs. Provoost, Lady Stirling, and her two daughters, Lady Mary Watts and Lady Kitty Duer. We learn that their aunt, Mrs. Peter Van Brugh Livingston, had the honor of dancing a cotillon with the President, who opened the ball with the wife of the Mayor of New York, Mrs. James Duane. He also danced in the minuet with Mrs. James Homer Maxwell, with whom as Miss Catharine Van Zandt he had repeatedly danced while the army was quartered at Morristown. When Washington entered the lists, dancing seemed to be elevated to the dignity of a function of the state, and in proof of the grace with which his Excellency could tread a measure it is related that a French gentleman, after observing him in the dance, paid him the high compliment of saying that a Parisian education could not have rendered his execution more admirable. Mrs. James Beekman,[17] born Jane Keteletas, was the belle of the de Moustier ball, a week later, and gazing upon her serene face, framed in by a little cap of gauze and ribbon, that would have been trying to features less perfect, we can readily believe that she also occupied a prominent place in the inaugural festivities. Mrs. William Smith, who had returned from London, where her husband was Secretary of the American legation, was present, as was also Lady Temple, the American wife of Sir John Temple, British Consul-General, whom the Marquis de Chastellux found so distinguished that it was unnecessary to pronounce her beautiful. Her husband, Sir John, took upon himself “singular airs,” says Mrs. William Smith, and this spirited little woman declined to visit my lady because she did not consider that Sir John treated her spouse with proper deference. Lady Christiana Griffin, the Scotch wife of Cyrus Griffin, President of Congress, was also one of the guests of the evening.
Among New York women whose husbands held high positions were Mrs. Alexander Hamilton; Mrs. Ralph Izard, wife of the Senator from South Carolina, whose surname furnished Mrs. Bache a peg on which to hang her bon-mot about knowing everything South Carolinian from B[18] to Z (izzard); Mrs. Robert R. Livingston, the daughter of Colonel Henry Beekman, whose husband had a week earlier administered the oath of office to the President; Mrs. King, born Mary Alsop, of whose marriage to Rufus King John Adams speaks as “additional bonds to cement the love between New York and old Massachusetts;” and Mrs. Elbridge Gerry, wife of the Senator from Massachusetts. The Rev. Manasseh Cutler visited the Gerrys when they were living in Philadelphia, and speaks of the beauty and accomplishments of the New York lady. He expressed to her his surprise that Philadelphia ladies rose so early, saying that he saw them at breakfast at half-past five, when in Boston they could hardly see a breakfast-table before nine without falling into hysterics. To which Mrs. Gerry replied that she had become inured to early rising and found it conducive to her health.
Stately courtesy and dignity, combined with a certain simplicity begotten of pioneer living in a new country, seem to have been the distinguishing characteristics of this old-time society, and of the couple who presided over it and knew so well how to balance the functions of public office with the sacred demands of home life.
In days of retirement at Mount Vernon, when engaged in instructing her maidens, or in household pursuits, Mrs. Washington was always simply attired, and in cloth of home manufacture. She could, however, on occasions of state appear in rich costumes of satin, velvet, and lace, while the President, although appearing at the inaugural ceremonies in a suit of cloth of American manufacture, on festal occasions donned the velvet and satin that so well became him. With his republicanism in national affairs, it is evident that Washington inclined more to the state and ceremony of Old-World courts than to the extreme, almost bald, simplicity that came in with a later administration. The statement of that unknown “Virginia colonel” who said that General Washington’s “bows were more distant and stiff than anything he had seen at St. James’s” savors of probability, although disputed by some of his contemporaries, and Mr. Breck tells us that the President “had a stud of twelve or fourteen horses, and occasionally rode out to take the air with six horses to his coach, and always two footmen behind his carriage;” adding, “He knew how to maintain the dignity of his station. None of his successors, except the elder Adams, has placed a proper value on a certain degree of display that seems suitable for the chief magistrate of a great nation. I do not mean pageantry, but the decent exterior of a well-bred gentleman.” A President who thus realized all the dignity that his office implied naturally introduced a certain amount of form and ceremony into the social life of the capital, and when Mrs. Washington came from Mount Vernon, on the 27th of May, receptions were held at the old Franklin house on Cherry Street, whose like, for a certain state and fine aroma of old-time courtesy, we shall never see again. Those who, “with the earliest attention and respect, paid their devoirs to the amiable consort of our beloved President were,” says one of the newspapers of the time, “the Ladies of the Most Hon. Mr. Langdon [State Senator from New Hampshire] and the Most Hon. Mr. Dalton, the Mayoress [Mrs. James Duane], Mrs. Livingston of Clermont, Mrs. Chancellor Livingston, Mrs. Montgomery, Mrs. McComb, Mrs. Lynch, the Misses Bayard, and a great number of other respectable characters. Mrs. Washington from Philadelphia was accompanied by the Lady of Mr. Robert Morris.” We also learn that the President met his wife at Trenton, and that with a gayly-decorated and well-manned barge she made her journey to the seat of government.
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.
At her formal receptions, which Mr. Daniel Huntingdon has represented in his famous picture, Mrs. Washington stood with the Cabinet ladies around her, stately Mrs. Robert Morris by her side, herself the stateliest figure in the group. The President passed from guest to guest, exchanging a word with one and another, and pleasing all by the fine courtesy of his manner. The lovely ladies and the dignified gentlemen, many of the latter with powdered heads and bag-wigs, like his Excellency, trooped up by twos and threes to pay their respects to the first lady in the land. If around the Chief Magistrate were gathered the great men of the nation, those who, like John Adams, Robert Morris, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay, had already impressed themselves deeply upon the past, and in connection with such younger minds as those of James Madison, Rufus King, Elbridge Gerry, and Oliver Ellsworth, the Cerberus of the Treasury, were destined to outline the serener history of the future, Mrs. Washington numbered in her Republican Court the noblest and most beautiful women in the land. Among these were many who, like her, had shared with their husbands the anxieties of the Revolutionary period,—notably, Mrs. General Knox, Mrs. Robert Morris, and Mrs. Adams,—while in a younger group were Mrs. Rufus King, who is described as singularly handsome, Mrs. Gerry, Mrs. George Clinton, Mrs. William Smith, John Adams’s daughter, Mrs. Walter Livingston, whom General Washington had once entertained, in rustic style, when encamped near New York, and, not the least attractive among these lovely dames, Mrs. John Jay, a daughter of Governor Livingston, who shared with Mrs. William Bingham, of Philadelphia, the distinction of being called the most beautiful and charming woman in America. Honors seem to have been easy between these two high-born dames, as both were beloved, admired, and fêted at home and abroad. The Marquise de Lafayette, who entertained a warm friendship for Mrs. Jay, said, with charming simplicity, that “Mrs. Jay and she thought alike, that pleasure might be found abroad, but happiness only at home.” All of Mrs. Jay’s portraits represent a face of such exquisite beauty that it is not difficult to imagine the furore she created at foreign and Republican courts.
Does there not seem to have been an indefinable charm of exquisiteness and dignity about these old-time dames, like the fragrance that surrounds some fine and stately exotic? They had abundant leisure to make their daily sacrifice to the graces, and they always appear before us in full toilette,—hair rolled or curled, slippers high of heel, and gown of stiff brocade or satin. We never catch these fair ladies en déshabille, nor do we desire to do so; their charm would as surely vanish before the inglorious ease of a loose morning gown and roomy slippers as does that of an American Indian when he divests himself of his war-paint and feathers. We read with equanimity of some of the belles of the period sitting all night with their pyramidal heads propped up against pillows, because the hair-dresser could not make his round without attending to some heads the night before the ball. This was “souffrir pour être belle” with a vengeance; yet, deeming it all in keeping with their stately elegance, for which they had to pay a price, we never stop to think of how their poor necks must have ached, choosing rather to dwell upon their triumphs when they entered the ball-room. We can hear Mr. Swanwick, or some other poet of the day, pay them the most extravagant compliments, while lamenting the void left by the absence of another fair one:
“Say why, amid the splendid rows
Of graceful belles and polish’d beaux,
Does not Markoe appear?
Has some intrusive pain dismay’d
From festive scenes the lov’ly maid,
Or does she illness fear?”
Is it possible that Markoe could not get her head dressed in time, and thus missed the ball? We wonder, and, wondering, lavish so much sympathy upon her for the pleasure she has lost that we forget to moralize upon the impropriety of Mr. Swanwick’s paying such exaggerated compliments, which would turn the head of any girl of to-day. We of this generation reverse the order of nature; like doting grandparents we enjoy the picturesque beauty of these stately ancestors, and, with never a thought of their higher good, retail their triumphs with enthusiasm, wishing that for one brief moment we could turn back and feel what they felt when their world was at their feet. It was a very small world, according to our ideas, but it was the largest that they knew, and it was all their own.
What a gay pageant that old social life seems as it passes before us! We almost forget that the picture is limned against the stern background of war, for it is one in which the shadows have all faded out, leaving only the bright colors upon the canvas. Let it remain so. Why should we weep over sorrows so long past? The sting has all gone from them, and surely there can no harm come to this generation from dwelling upon the beauty and grace of those fair ladies, who ruled society in New York a hundred years ago, or upon the bravery and strength of the noble men who gathered around them. Sic transit gloria mundi! cries the moralist; but the glory has not all passed away, as is proved by our lingering over it now, nor need it be quite effaced from the gay life of to-day, if hearts still beat as true under silk and broadcloth as did those of the fathers and mothers of the Republic beneath brocaded bodices and satin waistcoats.
