intermediary pauses, when to accomplish
mechanically the obligatory circuit of a saloon, was all that was
requisite, nothing but the skeleton of departed glory remained.

We would certainly have hesitated to speak of the Polonaise, after
the exquisite verses which Mickiewicz has consecrated to it, and the
admirable description which he has given of it in the last Canto of the
"Pan Tadeusz," but that this description is to be found only in a work
not yet translated, and, consequently, only known to the compatriots of
the Poet. [Footnote: It has been translated into German.--T.] It would
have been presumptuous, even under another form, to have ventured upon
a subject already sketched and colored by such a hand, in his romantic
Epic, in which beauties of the highest order are set in such a scene as
Ruysdael loved to paint; where a ray of sunshine, thrown through heavy
storm-clouds, falls upon one of those strange trees never wanting in his
pictures, a birch shattered by lightning, while its snowy bark is deeply
stained, as if dyed in the blood flowing from its fresh and gaping
wounds. The scenes of "Pan Tadeusz" are laid at the beginning of the
present century, when many still lived who retained the profound feeling
and grave deportment of the ancient Poles, mingled with those who were
even then under the sway of the graceful or giddying passions of modern
origin. These striking and contrasting types existing together at
that period, are now rapidly disappearing before that universal
conventionalism which is at present seizing and moulding the higher
classes in all cities and in all countries. Without doubt, Chopin
frequently drew fresh inspiration from this noble poem, whose scenes so
forcibly depict the emotions he best loved to reproduce.

The primitive music of the Polonaise, of which we have no example of
greater age than a century, possesses but little value for art. Those
Polonaises which do not bear the names of their authors, but are
frequently marked with the name of some hero, thus indicating
their date, are generally grave and sweet. The Polonaise styled "de
Kosciuszko," is the most universally known, and is so closely linked
with the memories of his epoch, that we have known ladies who could not
hear it without breaking into sobs. The Princess F. L., who had been
loved by Kosciuszko, in her last days, when age had enfeebled all her
faculties, was only sensible to the chords of this piece, which her
trembling