"Alas, and of all these notable or noticeable human talents, and excellent perseverances and energies, backed by mountains of wealth, and led by the divine art of Music and Rhythm vouchsafed by Heaven to them and us, what was to be the issue here this evening? An hour's amusement, not amusing either, but wearisome and dreary, to a high-dizened select populace of male and female persons, who seemed to me not worth much amusing! Could any one have pealed into their hearts once, one true thought, and glimse of Self-vision: 'High-dizened 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.