enty-five cents a gallon. This admirable
housekeeping is equalled in economy only by that of a millionnaire, a
New-Yorker, and a bachelor also, whose accounts, all accurately kept by
his own hand, showed, after death, that (1st) his own living, (2d) his
support of religion, (3d) his charities, (4th) his gifts to a favorite
niece, had not averaged, for twenty years, over five hundred dollars.
Truly, the city is a cheap place to live in, for those who know how! And
what place is cheap for those who do not?

Contrary to the old notion, the more accurate statistics of recent times
have proved the city, as compared with the country, the more healthy,
the more moral, and the more religious place. What used to be considered
the great superiority of the country--hardship, absence of social
excitements and public amusements, simple food, freedom from moral
exposure--a better knowledge of the human constitution, considered
either physically or morally, has shown to be decidedly opposed to
health and virtue. More constitutions are broken down in the hardening
process than survive and profit by it. Cold houses, coarse food
unskilfully cooked, long winters, harsh springs, however favorable to
the heroism of the stomach, the lungs, and the spirits, are not found
conducive to longevity. In like manner, monotony, seclusion, lack of
variety and of social stimulus lower the tone of humanity, drive to
sensual pleasures and secret vices, and nourish a miserable pack of
mean and degrading immoralities, of which scandal, gossip, backbiting,
tale-bearing are the better examples.

In the Old World, the wealth of states is freely expended in the
embellishment of their capitals. It is well understood, not only that
loyalty is never more economically secured than by a lavish appeal to
the pride of the citizen in the magnificence of the public buildings
and grounds which he identifies with his nationality, but that popular
restlessness is exhaled and dangerous passions drained off in the
roominess which parks and gardens afford the common people. In the
New World, it has not yet proved necessary to provide against popular
discontents or to bribe popular patriotism with spectacles and
state-parade; and if it were so, there is no government with an interest
of its own separate from that of the people to adopt this policy. It has
therefore been concluded that democratic institutions must necessarily
lack splendor and great public provision for the g