g through those impressible temperaments like an aurora in a
midnight sky, a general promenade is recommenced, and in its accelerated
movements, we cannot detect the least symptom of fatigue among all
these delicate yet enduring women; as if their light limbs possessed the
flexible tenacity and elasticity of steel!

As if by intuition, all the Polish women possess the magical science
of this dance. Even the least richly gifted among them know how to draw
from it new charms. If the graceful ease and noble dignity of those
conscious of their own power are full of attraction in it, timidity and
modesty are equally full of interest. This is so because of all modern
dances, it breathes most of pure love. As the dancers are always
conscious that the gaze of the spectators is fastened upon them,
addressing themselves constantly to them, there reigns in its very
essence a mixture of innate tenderness and mutual vanity, as full of
delicacy and propriety as of allurement.

The latent and unknown poetry, which was only indicated in the original
Polish Mazourkas, was divined, developed, and brought to light, by
Chopin. Preserving their rhythm, he ennobled their melody, enlarged
their proportions; and--in order to paint more fully in these
productions, which he loved to hear us call "pictures from the easel,"
the innumerable and widely-differing emotions which agitate the heart
during the progress of this dance, above all, in the long intervals in
which the cavalier has a right to retain his place at the side of the
lady, whom he never leaves--he wrought into their tissues harmonic
lights and shadows, as new in themselves as were the subjects to which
he adapted them.

Coquetries, vanities, fantasies, inclinations, elegies, vague emotions,
passions, conquests, struggles upon which the safety or favor of others
depends, all--all, meet in this dance. How difficult it is to form a
complete idea of the infinite gradations of passion--sometimes pausing,
sometimes progressing, sometimes suing, sometimes ruling! In the
country where the Mazourka reigns from the palace to the cottage, these
gradations are pursued, for a longer or shorter time, with as much ardor
and enthusiasm as malicious trifling. The good qualities and faults
of men are distributed among the Poles in a manner so fantastic, that,
although the essentials of character may remain nearly the same in all,
they vary and shade into each other in a manner so extraordinary,
tha