The number of foreign exiles who at this time were moving in Philadelphia society gave a cosmopolitan character to the city, and lent to it the air of foreign capitals. Talleyrand, Beaumais, Vicomte de Noailles and his brother-in-law Lafayette, Volney, the Duc de Liancourt, and General Moreau, and at a later date Joseph Bonaparte and Murat, were but a few of the distinguished members of the "French colony."
JOSEPH DENNIE, the most interesting figure among American editors, came to Philadelphia in 1799 as clerk to Timothy Pickering, who was then Secretary of State, and his brilliant social qualities soon won him recognition in the city. "The American Addison" he was called then, a title he had won by the easy grace and pleasing melody of his style.[9] He was born in Boston, August 30, 1768, and was sent to Harvard College, where he proved a jibbing pupil, and was rusticated for a term of six months. He industriously read all the books that were proscribed by the Faculty, and ignored those studies that were recommended to him. His was a brilliant but undisciplined mind, strongly independent, impetuous, fond of contradiction, full of surprises, "studious of change and fond of novelty," as he often defined himself. Soon after beginning the study of law, Dennie wrote, "In the infancy of a profession 'tis chimerical to talk of undeviating integrity. Let hair-brained enthusiasts prate in their closets as loudly as they please to the contrary, a young adventurer in any walk of life must take advantage of the events and weaknesses of his fellow-mortals, or be content to munch turnip in a cell amidst want and obscurity." Of course, all this is very outrageous, but altogether what we should expect from such "unimproved mettle, hot and full." He abandoned the law, and was among the first men in America to devote himself to literature.
[9] When British reviewers styled Dennie "the American Addison," the _Aurora Gazette_ broke forth into the following horse-laugh: "Exult, ye white hills of New Hampshire, redoubtable Monadnock and Tuckaway! Laugh, ye waters of the Winiseopee and Umbagog Lakes! Flow smooth in heroic verse, ye streams of Amorioosack and Androscoggin, Cockhoko and Coritocook! And you, merry Merrimack, be now more merry!"