hemispheres. The luxuriant fancy of my favorite artist has suggested
unique collocations of aquaria and mossy grottoes in the angles of the
apartment, where the vegetable wealth of the tropics rises in perfect
bounty and lawless exuberance, and fishes of every hue and shape flash
to and fro among the tangled roots, in the light of a thousand lamps. In
the centre, I have caused the seats of the orchestra to be hidden at the
summit of a picturesque group of rocks, profusely hung with vegetation,
and gemmed with a hundred tiny fountains that trickle in bright beads
and diamonds into the reservoir at the base. From this eminence, the
melody of sixty unequalled performers pervades the saloon, justly
diffused, and on all sides the same; unlike the crude arrangements of
most modern orchestras, where at one end of the room you are deluged
with music, and at the other extremity you distinguish the notes with
pain or difficulty. The ceiling, by a rare combination of mechanical
ingenuity and artistic inspiration, displays, so as to quite deceive the
senses, the heavens with all their stars moving in just and harmonious
order. Here on summer nights you see Lyra and Altair triumphantly
blazing in the middle sky as they sweep their mighty arch through the
ample zenith; and low in the south, the Scorpion crawls along the verge
with the red Antares at his heart, and the bright arrows of the Archer
forever pursuing him. Here in winter, gazing up through the warm and
perfumed air, you behold those bright orbs that immemorially suggest the
icy blasts of January: Aldebaran; the mighty suns of Orion; diamond-like
Capella; and the clear eyes of the Gemini. Under such influences, with
the breath of the tropics in your nostrils, and your heart stirred by
the rich melodies of the invisible orchestra, waltzing becomes a sublime
passion, in which all your faculties dilate to utmost expansion, and you
float out into happy forgetfulness of time and destiny.

Rarely at these fetes do we dance to other measures than those of the
waltz, though at times we find a relief from the luxuriance of that
divine rhythm in the cooler cadences of the Schottish. By universal
consent and instinct, we banish the quadrille, stiff and artificial; the
polka, inelegant and essentially vulgar; and the various hybrid
measures with which the low ingenuity of professors has filled society.
But we move like gods and goddesses to the sadly joyful strains of
Strauss and Webe