To one long accustomed to the quiet and monotony of a country life, it would be difficult to present a spectacle more novel or striking than this of a public ball-room; and though for such a novelty it was not necessary to cross the water, yet assuredly, in his own country, Mr Bloomfield would never have been present at such a spectacle. We go abroad as much to throw ourselves for a time into new manners of life, as to find new scenes of existence. He stood bewildered. Some two hundred couples gyrating like mad before him. Sometimes the number would thin, and the fervour of the movement abate--the floor began, in parts, to be visible--the storm and the whirlwind were dying away. But a fresh impulse again seized on both musicians and dancers--the throng of these gentle dervishes, of these amiable mænads, became denser than ever--the movement more furious--the music seemed to madden them and to grow mad itself: he shut his eyes, and drew back quite dizzy from the scene.
It is a singular phenomenon, this waltz, retained as it is in the very heart of our cold and punctilious civilisation. How have we contrived, amidst our quiet refinement and fastidious delicacy, to preserve an amusement which has in it the very spirit of the Cherokee Indian? There is nothing sentimental--nothing at all, in the waltz. In this respect, mammas need have no alarm. It is the mere excitement of rapid movement--a dextrous and delirious rotation. It is the enthusiasm only of the feet--the ecstacy of mere motion. Yes! just at that moment when, on the extended arm of the cavalier, the soft and rounded arm of his partner is placed so gently and so gracefully--(as for the hand upon the whalebone waist no electricity comes that way)--just then there may be a slight emotion which would be dangerous if prolonged; but the dance begins, and there is no room for any other rapture than that of its own swift and giddy course. There are no beatings of the heart after that; only pulsations of the great artery.
Found where it is, it is certainly a remarkable phenomenon, this waltz. Look now at that young lady--how cold, formal, stately!--how she has been trained to act the little queen amongst her admirers and flatterers! See what a _reticence_ in all her demeanour. Even feminine curiosity, if not subdued, has been dissimulated; and though she notes every thing and every body, and can describe, when she returns home, the dress of half the ladies in the room, it is with an eye that seems to notice nothing. Her head has just been released from the hair-dresser, and every hair is elaborately adjusted. To the very holding of an enormous bouquet, "round as my shield," which of itself seems to forbid all thoughts of motion--every thing has been arranged and re-arranged. She sits like an alabaster figure; she speaks, it is true, and she smiles as she speaks; but evidently the smile and the speech have no natural connexion with one another; they co-exist, but they have both been quite separately studied, prepared, permitted. Well, the waltz strikes up, and at a word from that bowing gentleman, himself a piece of awful formality, this pale, slow, and graceful automaton has risen. Where is she now? She is gone--vanished--transformed. She is nowhere to be seen. But in her stead there is a breathless girl, with flushed cheeks, ringlets given to the wind, dress flying all abroad, spinning round the room, darting diagonally across it, whirling fast as her little feet can carry her--faster, faster--for it is her more powerful cavalier, who, holding her firmly by the waist, sustains and augments her speed.