most
expensive persons, Aristocracy so called, or _Best_ of the
World, beware, beware what proofs you give of betterness and
bestness!' and then the salutary pang of conscience in reply:
'A select Populace, with money in its purse, and drilled a
little by the posture-maker: good Heavens! if that were what,
here and every where in God's Creation, I _am_? And a world all
dying because I am, and show myself to be, and to have long
been, even that? John, the carriage, the carriage; swift! Let
me go home in silence, to reflection, perhaps to sackcloth and
ashes!' This, and not amusement, would have profited those
high-dizened persons.

"Amusement, at any rate, they did not get from Euterpe and
Melpomene. These two Muses, sent for, regardless of expense, I
could see, were but the vehicle of a kind of service which I
judged to be Paphian rather. Young beauties of both sexes used
their opera-glasses, you could notice, not entirely for looking
at the stage. And it must be owned the light, in this explosion
of all the upholsteries, and the human fine arts and coarse,
was magical; and made your fair one an Armida,--if you liked
her better so. Nay, certain old Improper-Females (of quality),
in their rouge and jewels, even these looked some
_reminiscence_ of enchantment; and I saw this and the other
lean domestic Dandy, with icy smile on his old worn face; this
and the other Marquis Singedelomme, Prince Mahogany, or the
like foreign Dignitary, tripping into the boxes of said
females, grinning there awhile with dyed moustachios and
macassar-oil graciosity, and then tripping out again;--and, in
fact, I perceived that Colletti and Cerito and the Rhythmic
Arts were a mere accompaniment here.

"Wonderful to see; and sad, if you had eyes! Do but think of
it. Cleopatra threw pearls into her drink, in mere waste; which
was reckoned foolish of her. But here had the Modern
Aristocracy of men brought the divinest of its Arts, heavenly
Music itself; and, piling all the upholsteries and ingenuities
that other human art could do, had lighted them into a bonfire
to illuminate an hour's flirtation of Singedelomme, Mahogany,
and these improper persons! Never in Nature had I seen such
waste before. O Colletti, you whose inborn melody, once of
kindred as I