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[52] a month later. After that event, New York grew rapidly into a supremacy of numbers, of intellectual life, and of literary achievement. A year later, however, Congress returned to Philadelphia, there to remain until, in 1800, Washington became the permanent seat of government.


A social centre.

During and just after the Revolution, then, Philadelphia had the right to be regarded as the American metropolis. Public men gathered there from all parts of the country, and cultivated women came with them. French visitors, who soon became very numerous, criticised the city, found its rectangular streets tiresome and the habits of the people more rectangular still; but Americans thought it gay and delightful. Brissot de Warville declared that the pretensions of the ladies were “too affected to be pleasing” and the Comte de Rochambeau said that the wives of merchants went to the extreme of French fashions. The sarcastic Talleyrand said “their luxury is frightful” (“leur luxe est affreux”), leaving it an open question whether it was the amount of luxury to which he objected, or the kind of it. Mrs. John Adams, who had lived in Europe, complained

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