our country, is but to conceive a most imperfect and
erroneous notion. With us, the first _coup d'oeil_ is everything; the
nuns, the shepherdesses, the Turks, sailors, eastern princes, watchmen,
moonshees, milestones, devils, and Quakers are all very well in their way
as they pass in the review before us, but when we come to mix in the
crowd, we discover that, except the turban and the cowl, the crook and
the broad-brim, no further disguise is attempted or thought of. The nun,
forgetting her vow and her vestments, is flirting with the devil; the
watchman, a very fastidious elegant, is ogling the fishwomen through his
glass; while the Quaker is performing a _pas seul_ Alberti might be proud
of, in a quadrille of riotous Turks and half-tipsy Hindoos; in fact, the
whole wit of the scene consists in absurd associations. Apart from this,
the actors have rarely any claims upon your attention; for even supposing
a person clever enough to sustain his character, whatever it be, you must
also supply the other personages of the drama, or, in stage phrase, he'll
have nothing to "play up to." What would be Bardolph without Pistol; what
Sir Lucius O'Triuger without Acres? It is the relief which throws out the
disparities and contradictions of life that afford us most amusement; hence
it is that one swallow can no more make a summer, than one well-sustained
character can give life to a masquerade. Without such sympathies, such
points of contact, all the leading features of the individual, making him
act and be acted upon, are lost; the characters being mere parallel lines,
which, however near they approach, never bisect or cross each other.

This is not the case abroad: the domino, which serves for mere concealment,
is almost the only dress assumed, and the real disguise is therefore thrown
from necessity upon the talents, whatever they be, of the wearer. It is
no longer a question of a beard or a spangled mantle, a Polish dress or
a pasteboard nose; the mutation of voice, the assumption of a different
manner, walk, gesture, and mode of expression, are all necessary, and no
small tact is required to effect this successfully.

I may be pardoned this little digression, as it serves to explain in some
measure how I felt on entering the splendidly lit up _salons_ of the
villa, crowded with hundreds of figures in all the varied costumes of a
carnival,--the sounds of laughter mingled with the crash of the music;
the hurrying hither and thith