me the justice to believe that I am fond only of what comes from the heart. Under a conviction that the demonstrations of respect and affection to him originate in that source, I cannot deny that I have taken some interest and pleasure in them. The difficulties which presented themselves to view upon his first entering upon the Presidency seem thus to be, in some measure, surmounted. It is owing to the kindness of our numerous friends, in all quarters, that my new and unwished-for situation is not indeed a burd n to me. When I was much younger, I should probably have enjoyed the innocent gayeties of life as much as most persons of my age; but I had long since placed all the prospects of my future worldly happiness in the still enjoyments of the fireside at Mount Vernon.

"I little thought when the war was finished, that any circumstances could possibly happen, which would call the General into public life again. I had anticipated that, from that moment, we should be suffered to grow old together, in solitude and tranquillity. That was the first and dearest wish of my heart. I will not, however, contemplate, with too much regret, disappointments that were inevitable; though his feelings and my own were in perfect unison with respect to our predilection for private life, yet I cannot blame him for having acted according to his ideas of duty in obeying the voice of his country. The consciousness of having attempted to do all the good in his power, and the pleasure of finding his fellow citizens so well satisfied with the disinterestedness of his conduct, will doubtless be some compensation for the great sacrifices which I know he has made. Indeed, on his journey from Mount Vernon to this place, in his late tour through the Eastern States, by every public and every private information which has come to him, I am persuaded he has experienced nothing to make him repent his having acted from what he conceives to be a sense of indispensable duty. On the contrary, all his sensibility has been

awakened in receiving such repeated and unequivocal proofs of sincere regard from his countrymen.

"With respect to myself, I sometimes think the arrangement is not quite as it ought to have been, that I, who had much rather be at home, should occupy a place with which a great many younger and gayer women would be extremely pleased. As my grand-children and domestic connections make up a great portion of the felicity which I looked for in this world, I shall hardly be able to find any substitute, that will indemnify me for the loss of such endearing society. I do not say this because I feel dissatisfied with my present station, for every body and every thing conspire to make me as content as possible in it, yet I have learned too much of the vanity of human affairs to expect felicity from the scenes of public life. I am still determined to be cheerful and happy in whatever situation I may be; for I have also learned, from experience, that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions, and not on our circumstances. We carry the seeds of the one or the other about with us in our minds, wherever we go.

"I have two of my grand-children with me, who enjoy advantages in point of education, and who, I trust, by the goodness of Providence, will be a great blessing to me. My other two grandchildren are with their mother in Virginia."

THE SEASON OF EIGHTY-NINE AND NINETY.

I.

THERE was a great deal of social elegance in New York at the close of the last century, though it must be confessed that in this respect the city could not be favorably compared with Philadelphia. Several families had held in the Province a sort of baronial supremacy, and they were now eminent in private life or public service; but there were no women here exercising that sway over manners and pleasures which was held in Philadelphia for many years by Mrs. Bingham. The Livingstons, Clintons, Van Rensselaers, Beekmans, Courtlandts, Philipses, Jays, De Lanceys, Osgoods, and other powerful families, many of whom were represented by manorial lords, possessed the solid distinctions of great wealth and good sense; but the piquant comparative criticisms of society in New York and Philadelphia, written by Miss Rebecca Franks, soon after the close of the war, had still a certain truth, which was easily recognized by persons familiar with the private life of both cities.

New York was the metropolis of the United States, under the Constitution, less than two years, and this period embraced but one winter. In the May and June following the inauguration there were a few public balls, and probably many private ones, but the ill health of the President, the death of his mother, and other cir

cumstances, prevented him from attending any subsequent to that given by the Count de Moustier, which has already been described in these pages, until after his return from the tour through the Eastern States, about the middle of November. Mrs. Washington had little inclination for such amusements, and was never once present at any ball in New York after the close of the revolution, notwithstanding what Mr. Jefferson says on this subject.

II.

THE adjournment of Congress, on the twenty-sixth of September, had been followed by a general dispersion of the families attracted to New York by the exigencies of the public business, and but few of them returned before the latter part of December. In the mean time, however, there were several accessions to official circles, and busy preparations for a gay winter season.

Of New England families perhaps not one had been more honored and trusted than that of Wolcott, and certainly no family in all the continent had preserved through its American generations a purer fame. Henry Wolcott emigrated from the mother country in 1630, to escape religious persecution, and after a short residence at Dorchester, in Massachusetts, settled in Windsor, Connecticut. His grandson, Roger Wolcott, was distinguished for military and civil services, and occupied in succession the most important offices in the colony, ending with that of governor. His son Oliver entered the army at twenty-one years of age, as a captain in the New York forces, and served on the northern frontier until the peace of Aix la Chapelle. He also became governor of Connecticut, and was a signer of the Declaration of Independence. His son, the second Oliver Wolcott, now between twenty-nine and thirty years of age, was in the autumn of 1789 appointed auditor of the Treasury, and we possess in his memoirs not only a mine of the

richest material for public history, but many very interesting glimpses of society and the circumstances of common life in the memorable period when the first President of the Republic was the centre of the court, or most eminent circle, about the seat of government. Among his classmates had been Joel Barlow, Zephaniah Swift, Uriah Tracy, and Noah Webster; and after his admission to the bar, and settlement in Hartford, he had been of that famous company of "Connecticut wits,"* including Trumbull, the author of

* On the ninth of December, Trumbull wrote to Wolcott, from Hartford, a characteristic letter, in which he says, “Our circle of friends wants new recruits. Humphreys, Barlow, and you are lost to us. Dr. Hopkins has an itch of running away to New York, but I trust his indolence will prevent him. However if you should catch him in your city I desire you to take him up and return him, or scare him so that we may have him again, for which you shall have sixpence reward and all charges. Webster has returned and brought with him a very pretty wife. I wish him success, but I doubt in the present decay of business in our profession, whether his profits will enable him to keep up the style he sets out with. I fear he will breakfast upon Institutes, dine upon Dissertations, and go to bed supperless. I cannot conceive what Barlow is doing. After being eighteen months abroad, you tell me he has got so far as to see favorable prospects. If he should not effect something soon, I would advise him to write 'The Vision of Barlow,' as a sequel to those of Columbus and MeFingal. Pray congratulate Colonel Humphreys, in my name, on his late promotion in the diplomatic line. If I understand the matter rightly, he holds the same post which Crispe promised George in the Vicar of Wakefield. You remember Crispe told him there was an embassy talked of from the synod of Pennsylvania to the Chickasaw Indians, and he would use his interest to get him appointed Secretary. Tell him not to be discouraged too much at his want of success. The President has tried him on McGillivray first, and he did not suit the skull of the savage, but we cannot argue from that circumstance that he could not fit as easy as a full bottomed wig upon the fat-headed, sot-headed, and crazy-headed sovereigns of Europe. Tell him this story also, for his comfort, and to encourage his hopes of speedy employment: A king being angry with an ambassador, asked him whether his master had no wise men at Court, and was therefore obliged to send him a fool? Sire,' said the other, 'my master has many wise men about his court, but he conceived me the most proper ambassador to your majesty.' Upon this principle I am in daily expectation of hearing that he is appointed minister plenipo. to George, Louis, or the Stadtholder. For is not his name Mumps? You must know that at this present writing I am confined with this paltry influenza. I kept it for six weeks at the stave's end, as Shakspeare's Malvolio did Beelzebub, but it has driven me into close quarters at last. Indeed I could not expect to avoid it, for old Wronghead says it is a Federal disorder, bred out of the new Constitution at New York, and communicated by infection from Congress. I see the President has returned all fragrant with the odor of incense. It must have given him satisfaction to find that the hearts of the people are united in his favor; but the blunt and acknowledged adulation of our addresses must often have wounded his feelings. We have gone through all the popish grades of worship, at least up to the Hyperdoulia. This tour has answered a good political purpose, and in a great measure stilled those who were clamoring about the wages of Congress and the salaries of officers."— Gibbs's History, i. 25.