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_PRICE TWENTY-FIVE CENTS._

THE LIFE OF

HENRIETTE SONTAG,
COUNTESS DE ROSSI.

[Illustration: portrait of Henriette Sontag]

NEW YORK:
STRINGER & TOWNSEND, 222 BROADWAY

1852

Now Ready--Third Edition of "The Heirs of Randolph Abbey." Price 25 cents.
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"DAGUERREOTYPE VIEWS OF UPPERTENDOM"

THE UPPER TEN THOUSAND:

Sketches of American Society.

By C. ASTOR BRISTED.

SECOND EDITION REVISED.

[Illustration]

With ORIGINAL ILLUSTRATIONS. Price 50 cents in paper; cloth, 75 cents.

Opinions of the Press.

"NEW-YORK LIFE, by a New-Yorker, clever, sparkling, and life-like. A set
of daguerreotypes, in which figure the drawing-rooms of the Avenue and
Union Place--the most noted _salons_ of the town--the butterfly crowds
of the watering-places, and pre-eminently--the Course. The hero of the
book, a modern fast young man, who has in a measure outgrown his
fastness, and looks patronizingly on the aspiring efforts of a very
young New-Yorker, cicerones you about, showing up the lions of town and
country, and all with a cool _blase_ sort of air that is wondrously
telling. With a stroke of the pen he annihilates the huge pretensions of
some _parvenu_ or bestows the final stab on the waning virtue of some
dashing belle. In the same moment giving a pithy _rationale_ of American
Society, and the best _recipe_ for concocting a sherry cobbler;
discussing, in the same breath, the popular theology of the town, and
the winning pacer on the Long Island course. Throughout, quietly
satirical yet seldom exaggerated. Looking at American life and manners
from no distant point, but as one who has been in, and of, and through
it all, pausing now and then to take down a jotting here, put in a bit
of shadow there, making more of life than 'John Timon;' not mere squints
through a _Lorgnette_, but broad, steady stares with the naked eye, with
now and then the help of a quizzing-glass."--_New-York Evening Mirror._

"They are sufficiently sprinkled with local satire, on a ground of a
pervading egotism, to be attractive in a book--in which capacity they
will hold their own with such memorable local effusions as IRVING and
PAULDING'S _Salmagundi_, HALLECK'S _Croakers_, and MITCHELL'S
_Lorgnette_."--_Literary World._

"We are glad to see these brilliant 'Sketches of American Society,'
incorporated into an elegant and portable volume, for they are
unquestionably the most veritable pictures of certain classes of
New-York society that have been written; we do not except even the
equally graphic portraits of 'The Lorgnette.' The great charm of Mr.
Bristed's sketches is the life-like characters he introduces as
illustrations of the varied phases of American society. These sketches
have been read with avidity as they appeared in the serial form, and
will doubtless form an inseparable travelling companion to our tourists
in their present compact shape, for they possess the interest of a
novel, with the piquancy and truthfulness of a personal
narrative."--MORRIS & WILLIS'S _Home Journal_.

"We must say that this little volume contains some true and vivid
sketches of men and manners, and that, notwithstanding its tone of
levity, it has within it a good moral. The moral is applicable in all
highly-civilized communities, and is simply this--when fashion is made
the _exclusive_ rule of life, one may search in vain for a man or woman
worth more than a moment's passing glance. All that is manly and
intelligent in the one sex, all that is feminine and lovely in the
other, gives place to a tasteless coating clumsily laid over a worthless
substance."--_New-York Albion._

"These sketches are lively, and adorned with characters whose types, we
may safely say whose originals, can be found in New-York in any winter,
and in Saratoga and Newport every summer. Mr. BRISTED'S descriptions of
gay life in those places certainly gave the English readers of _Fraser's
Magazine_ a