shades which
feminine tact and subtle feeling well know how to modify, ringing every
change, from the most impassioned and impulsive warmth of manner to an
air of the most complete "abandon."

What varied movements succeed each other in the course round the
ball-room! Commencing at first with a kind of timid hesitation, the lady
sways about like a bird about to take flight; gliding for some time on
one foot only, like a skater, she skims the ice of the polished floor;
then, running forward like a sportive child, she suddenly takes wing.
Raising her veiling eyelids, with head erect, with swelling bosom and
elastic bounds, she cleaves the air as the light bark cleaves the waves,
and, like an agile woodnymph, seems to sport with space. Again
she recommences her timid graceful gliding, looks round among the
spectators, sends sighs and words to the most, highly favored, then
extending her white arms to the partner who comes to rejoin her, again
begins her vigorous steps which transport her with magical rapidity from
one end to the other of the ball-room. She glides, she runs, she flies;
emotion colors her cheek, brightens her eye; fatigue bends her flexile
form, retards her winged feet, until, panting and exhausted, she softly
sinks and reclines in the arms of her partner, who, seizing her with
vigorous arm, raises her a moment in the air, before finishing with her
the last intoxicating round.

In this triumphal course, in which may be seen a thousand Atalantas as
beautiful as the dreams of Ovid, many changes occur in the figures. The
couples, in the first chain, commence by giving each other the hand;
then forming themselves into a circle, whose rapid rotation dazzles the
eye, they wreathe a living crown, in which each lady is the only flower
of its own kind, while the glowing and varied colors are heightened
by the uniform costume of the men, the effect resembling that of the
dark-green foliage with which nature relieves her glowing buds and
fragrant bloom. They all then dart forward together with a sparkling
animation, a jealous emulation, defiling before the spectators as in
a review--an enumeration of which would scarcely yield in interest
to those given us, by Homer and Tasso, of the armies about to range
themselves in the front of battle! At the close of an hour or two,
the same circle again forms to end the dance; and on those days when
amusement and pleasure fill all with an excited gayety, sparkling and
glitterin