There is no city, probably no village in America, where the female society is not refined, cultivated, and elegant. With or without regular advantages, woman attains the refinements and tact necessary to polite intercourse. No traveller ever ventured to complain of this part of American society. The great deficiency is that of agreeable, highly-cultivated men, whose pursuits have been elevated, and whose minds are pliable to the grace and changing spirit of conversation. Every man of talents possesses these qualities naturally, and hence the great advantage which Washington enjoys over every other city in our country. None but a shallow observer, or a malicious book-maker, would ever sneer at the exteriors or talk of the ill-breeding of such men as form, in great numbers, the agreeable society of this place—for a man of great talents never could be vulgar; and there is a superiority about most of these which raises them above the petty standard which regulates the outside of a coxcomb. Even compared with the dress and address of men of similar positions and pursuits in Europe, however (members of the house of commons, for example, or of the chamber of deputies in France,) it is positively the fact that the senators and representatives of the United States have a decided advantage. It is all very well for Mr. Hamilton, and other scribblers whose books must be spiced to go down, to ridicule a Washington _soirée_ for English readers; but if the observation of one who has seen assemblies of legislators and diplomatists in all the countries of Europe may be fairly placed against his and Mrs. Trollope’s, I may assert, upon my own authority, that they will not find, out of May Fair in England, so well-dressed and dignified a body of men. I have seen as yet no specimen of the rough animal described by them and others as the “western member;” and if David Crockett, (whom I was never so fortunate as to see) was of that description, the race must have died with him. It is a thing I have learned since I have been in Washington, to feel a wish that foreigners should see Congress in session. We are so humbugged, one way and another, by travellers’ lies.
I have heard the observation once or twice from strangers since I have been here, and it struck myself on my first arrival, that I had never seen within the same limit before, so many of what may be called “men of mark.” You will scarce meet a gentleman on the sidewalk in Washington, who would not attract your notice, seen elsewhere, as an individual possessing in his eye or general features a certain superiority. Never having seen most of the celebrated speakers of the senate, I busied myself for the first day or two in examining the faces that passed me in the street, in the hope of knowing them by the outward stamp which, we are apt to suppose, belongs to greatness. I gave it up at last, simply from the great number I met who might be (for all that features had to do with it) the remarkable men I sought.