s; but we do not remember to have seen the
subject more felicitously handled than by our friend: 'The crying vice of
the nation, and the one which of all others most fastens the charge of
inconsistency on our character and professions, is that apish spirit with
which we admire and copy every thing of European growth. While we exalt
our institutions, character and condition over those of all other nations,
and give ourselves 'a name above every name,' is it not supremely absurd
for city to vie with city and family with family in adopting the latest
fashions in dress and opinions originating in nations which have grown old
in profligacy, and abound in the worthless excrescences of society? We
profess to be perfectly independent of all control in our thoughts and
actions: '_Nullius addicti jurare in verba magistri_.' Yet who more
readily than we shout in chorus to the newest modes of thinking ushered
into ephemeral life by philosophers across the water? Who adopt so early
or carry so far the most outre and preposterous styles of dress invented
in Paris, as our American belles and dandies? The newest cut in garments
which was hatched in Paris beneath the crescent-moon, her waning rays see
carried to its utmost verge in our bustling marts. We follow the
revolutions in the configuration of coats, from square to round, and from
round to angular, with as scrupulous and painful a precision as if our
national honor depended on the issue. Nay, we are usually a little _too_
faithful, and fairly 'out-Herod Herod.' Does the cockney of the 'world's
metropolis' compress his toes in boots tapering at an angle of forty
degrees? The republican fop promenades Broadway with _his_ pedal
extremities squeezed into an angle of thirty; and the corns ensuing he
bears with christian fortitude; for does he not find his 'exceeding great
reward' in being more fashionable than the Londoner himself? Has the fat
of the Siberian bear, or 'thine incomparable oil, Macassar' called forth a
thicket of hair on the cheek of the Frenchman, reaching from the cerebral
pulse to the submaxillary bone? Instantly the pews of our churches, the
boxes of our theatres, and the seats of our legislative halls, are
thronged with whey-faced apes, the moisture of whose brains has exuded in
nourishing a frowning hedge, of which the dark luxuriance encircles the
whole face, resembling the old pictures of the saints wherewith our
childhood was amused, encompassed with a glory! When