t desires,
what vague hopes have been negligently thrown on the winds;--thrown
as the handkerchief of the fair dancer in the Mazourka... and which the
maladroit knows not how to pick up!...

We have before asserted that we must have known personally the women of
Poland, for the full and intuitive comprehension of the feelings with
which the Mazourkas of Chopin, as well as many more of his compositions,
are impregnated. A subtle love vapor floats like an ambient fluid around
them; we may trace step by step in his Preludes, Nocturnes Impromptus
and Mazourkas, all the phases of which passion is capable The sportive
hues of coquetry the insensible and gradual yielding of inclination, the
capricious festoons of fantasy; the sadness of sickly joys born dying,
flowers of mourning like the black roses, the very perfume of whose
gloomy leaves is depressing, and whose petals are so frail that the
faintest sigh is sufficient to detach them from the fragile stem; sudden
flames without thought, like the false shining of that decayed and
dead wood which only glitters in obscurity and crumbles at the touch;
pleasures without past and without future, snatched from accidental
meetings; illusions, inexplicable excitements tempting to adventure,
like the sharp taste of half ripened fruit which stimulates and pleases
even while it sets the teeth on edge; emotions without memory
and without hope; shadowy feelings whose chromatic tints are
interminable;--are all found in these works, endowed by genius with the
innate nobility, the beauty, the distinction, the surpassing elegance of
those by whom they are experienced.

In the compositions just mentioned, as well as in most of his Ballads,
Waltzes and Etudes, the rendering of some of the poetical subjects to
which we have just alluded, may be found embalmed. These fugitive poems
are so idealized, rendered so fragile and attenuated, that they scarcely
seem to belong to human nature, but rather to a fairy world, unveiling
the indiscreet confidences of Peris, of Titanias, of Ariels, of Queen
Mabs, of the Genii of the air, of water, and of fire,--like ourselves,
subject to bitter disappointments, to invincible disgusts.

Some of these compositions are as gay and fantastic as the wiles of an
enamored, yet mischievous sylph; some are soft, playing in undulating
light, like the hues of a salamander; some, full of the most profound
discouragement, as if the sighs of souls in pain, who could find non