" [*]
[Footnote *: The miserable moral dependence of this country on Great
Britain, forty years since, cannot well be brought home to the present
generation. It is still too great, but has not a tithe of its former
force. The writer has himself known an Italian Prince, a man of
family and of high personal merit, pass unnoticed before a society
that was eager to make the acquaintance of most of the "agents" of the
Birmingham button dealers; and this simply because one came from Italy
and the other from England. The following anecdote, which is quite as
true as any other fact in this work, furnishes a good example of what
is meant. It is now a quarter of a century since the writer's first
book appeared. Two or three months after the publication, he was
walking down Broadway with a friend, when a man of much distinction in
the New York circles was passing up, on the other side-walk. The
gentleman in question caught the writer's eye, bowed, and _crossed
the street_, to shake hands and inquire after the author's
health. The difference in years made this attention marked. "You are
in high favour," observed the friend, as the two walked away, to
"have ---- pay you such a compliment--your book must have done this."
"Now mark my words--I have been puffed in some English magazine,
and ---- knows it.
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