Hesperides, sweet
flowers odorous as the breezy blossoms which adorn the mountains.
Advance into that brilliant country, and you draw in life at every
pore--a thousand merry figures come to meet you: maidens clad in the
gay costumes of the elder time, all fluttering with ribbons, rosy
cheeks and lips!--maidens who smile, and with their taper fingers
point at those who follow them; gay shepherds, gallant in silk
stockings and embroidered doublets, carrying their crooks wreathed
round with flowers; while over all, the sun laughs gladly, and the
breezes bear away the merry voices, sprinkling on the air the joyous
music born of lightness and gay-heartedness.

All the old manners, dead and gone with dear grandmother's youth, are
fresh again; and myriads of children trip along on red-heeled shoes,
and agitate the large rosettes, and glittering ribbons, and bright
wreaths of flowers which deck them out like tender heralds of the
spring. And with them mingle all those maidens holding picture-decorated
fans with which they flirt--this is the derivation of our modern
word--and the gay gallants with their never-ending compliments and
smiles. And so the pageant sweeps along with music, joy, and laughter,
to the undiscovered land, hidden in mist, and entered by the gateway
of oblivion.

You see all this in reverie, gentle reader--build your pretty old
chateau to dream in, that is; and it swarms with figures--graceful and
grotesque as those old high-backed carven chairs--slender and delicate
as the chiselled wave which breaks in foam against the cornice. And
then you wake, and find the flowers pressed in the old volume called
the Past, all dry--your castle only a castle of your dreams. Poor
castle made of cards, which a child's finger fillips down, or, like
the frost palace on the window pane, faints and fails at a breath!

Your reverie is over: nothing bright can last, not even dreams; and so
your figures are all gone, your fairy realm obliterated--nothing lives
but the recollection of a shadow!

The reader is requested to identify our melancholy lover Jacques with
the foregoing sentences; and forgive him in consideration of his
unfortunate condition. Lovers, as every body knows, live dream-lives;
and what we have written is not an inaccurate hint of what passed
through the heart of Jacques as he went on beneath peach and cherry
blossoms to his love.

Poor Jacques was falling more deeply in love with every passing day.
That