A man who has revelled so often on the delicacies of Very and Robert; who has so long flourished with éclat in the saloons of the modern queen of cities; who has sickened his taste under the arches of the Colliseum, or on the heights of the Acropolis, and who must have often cast a glance at that jewel of architecture, the Bourse of Paris, as he has hurried into its din to learn the fate of his last investment in the three per cents of M. de Villele, may possibly turn with disdain from a description of the inartificial beauties of nature, a republican drawing-room, or a mall in a commercial town of North America. But you will remember how often I have passed the bridge of Lodi in your company, (methinks I hear the whizzing of the bullets now!) how patiently I have listened to your sonnets on the mien and mind of Sophie, and how meekly I have seen you discussing the fragments of a paté de foie gras, without so much as begrudging you a mouthful of the unctious morsel, though it were even the last. Presuming on this often tried, and seemingly inexhaustible patience, I shall proceed to trespass on your more elevated pursuits in the shape of one of my desultory accounts of the manners and mode of life of the grave burghers of New York.