o be a "remarkably intelligent
audience."

4. The climate of the place is particularly favorable to longevity.

5. It contains several persons of vast talent little known to the world.
(One or two of them, you may perhaps chance to remember, sent short
pieces to the "Paetolian" some time since, which were "respectfully
declined.")

Boston is just like other places of its size;--only, perhaps,
considering its excellent fish-market, paid fire-department, superior
monthly publications, and correct habit of spelling the English
language, it has some right to look down on the mob of cities. I'll tell
you, though, if you want to know it, what is the real offence of Boston.
It drains a large water-shed of its intellect, and will not itself be
drained. If it would only send away its first-rate men, instead of its
second-rate ones, (no offence to the well-known exceptions, of which we
are always proud,) we should be spared such epigrammatic remarks as that
which the gentleman has quoted. There can never be a real metropolis
in this country, until the biggest centre can drain the lesser ones of
their talent and wealth. I have observed, by the way, that the people
who really live in two great cities are by no means so jealous of each
other, as are those of smaller cities situated within the intellectual
basin, or _suction-range_, of one large one, of the pretensions of any
other. Don't you see why? Because their promising young author and
rising lawyer and large capitalist have been drained off to the
neighboring big city,--their prettiest girl has been exported to the
same market; all their ambition points there, and all their thin gilding
of glory comes from there. I hate little toad-eating cities.

----Would I be so good as to specify any particular example?--Oh,--an
example? Did you ever see a bear-trap? Never? Well, shouldn't you
like to see me put my foot into one? With sentiments of the highest
consideration I must beg leave to be excused.

Besides, some of the smaller cities are charming. If they have an old
church or two, a few stately mansions of former grandees, here and there
an old dwelling with the second story projecting, (for the convenience
of shooting the Indians knocking at the front-door with their
tomahawks,)--if they have, scattered about, those mighty-square houses
built something more than half a century ago, and standing like
architectural boulders dropped by the former diluvium of wealth, whose
refl