PHILOSOPHY OF A BALL-ROOM. 79
away the evening, and grumble over the weariness, staleness, flatness, and unprofitableness of life among ladies in satin gowns, and gentlemen in satin cravats, than in the domestic desolation of home. After these, we rank the routineers, who order their carriages to the door at eleven o'clock P.M., every night between April and July, merely because they have done the same every season for the last ten years; -persons, in fact, who go everywhere, and see every thing, because every body of their acquaintance does the same. Then we have the dowagers “on business; “intent on exhibiting my youngest daughter-her first season, “or “my sweet young friend, Lady Jane, quite a novice, as you may perceive, in gay scenes of this description. “A little further may be seen certain fading beauties, whose daughters and Lady Janes are still with the governess; profiting by their absence to listen to the whispers of the Colonel and Lord Henry, who are either already married, or not “marrying men. “Close at hand are two or three husbands of the fading beauties; either perplexed in the extreme by the mature coquetry of their worse halves, or taking notes for a curtain lecture, or gathering data for conjugal recrimination. Others, both of the Lady Janes, and the married beauties, are there at the hollow impulse of mere vanity; to show the beautiful robe a la Grecque, smuggled from Paris through Cholera and quarantine, or anxious to prove that, though the Duchess of Buccleugh's diamonds are very fine, their own are more tastefully set. A few “very good-natured friends “of the hostess go in hopes of discovering that the supper is deficient by a dozen of champaigne and half a dozen pounds of grapes; while one or two flirts of a somewhat pronounced notoriety, go that their names may be included in the Morning Post list of persons present, ( or our own, ) which thus endorses their passport to other and better balls. The young men go to prove that they are in fashion; the middle-aged to show that they are not too old to be asked to balls; and the elderlies because they find themselves shouldered at the Clubs, and can bestow in a ball-room their tediousness without measure or limitation on any unlucky person whose carriage is ordered late.
“I did not expect to see you here, “observes Mrs. A. to Mrs. B. on the landing-place leading to Lady F's. ball-room, which neither has any chance of entering for the next half hour.
“ I dare say not; —this is the first time 1 ever ventured here. But, to say the truth, I want to show people I am in town, without the bore of sending round my cards. "
“How old Lady Maria is grown! -and what in the world does she mean by coming out so soon? It is very little more than a year since she lost her husband. "
“If you had such lumber to dispose of as four ugly daughters, you would take no note of time, ' as far as the forms of widowhood are concerned. "
“And there is the bride, Lady Mary Grubb! In my time people did not allow the world to encroach upon their honeymoon! "
“But you see she has forfeited caste by marrying a parvenu, and loses no time in showing people that the creature has less of the shop about him than might be expected. "
“And her mother, the marchioness, I protest! ““Of course. She is very wise to put a good face on this awkward business of her eldest daughter "
“And poor Mrs. Partlet-taking care that her great, gawky, silly son, does not commit himself by blundering into the nets of the marrying young ladies. "
“And Lady Helena watching her husband's flirtation with Mrs. Tomtit, while her eye-glass actually trembles with jealous fury! "
“And little Clara Fidget, trying to find out by what vile designing damsel Lord Charles has been kidnapped away from her. "
“There is scarcely any one here to-night, “cries Mrs. A., standing aside a moment, to make way for the crowd, which has already torn away a yard of her sabots.
“What can you expect in a house where they ask every body. Lady F. is in the popularity line. She invites whole families-from the great grandmother in her diamond stomacher, to the open-mouthed hobbledehoy in loose nankins, at home for his Easter holidays. "
“It is a great impertinence in people to inflict one with an indiscriminate mob. I shall never come here again. Ah! Colonel de Hauteville, I see you have struggled through the billows. What chance have we of getting into the ballroom. "
“Luckily, for you, very little. It is a very bad ball-hardly a face one knows. "
“Sir William, you have been dancing, I perceive? "
“There is no other way of getting room to stir in a crowd of this sort. I was obliged to ask one of Lady F's. daughters to waltz, to escape from between two great fat women, who were squeezing me into gold-beater's skin. Dunbar! How are you? "
“How am I? why, very much bored, of course. What shall we do? Is there a supper? "
“Not such a one as a Christian man should venture on. Let us go to Crockford's. "
“With all my heart. Make haste. Lady F. will be laying violent hands on you, and wanting you to dance. "
“If I do, & c. & c. & c. "
In nine cases out of ten, such, or such like, is the dialogue of the very people who have passed two hours between dinner and dressing time yawning on a sofa, lest they should be betrayed into going unfashionably early-who have endured for another hour the pains and penalties of being laced, curled, rouged, stuck with a paper of pins, and fidgetted by the difficult coalition of three dozen hooks-and-eyes, in order to do honour to the assembly; and who, at last, insist on dragging two unoffending quadrupeds, and two or three wretched domestics, out of their beds in “the sweet o ' the night, “in order that they may be seen and see, by candlelight, a crowd of idle
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80 ON MUSIC, & c.
men and women of fashion, whom they may see by daylight any day in the week.
Yet hence the poor are clothed, the mean are fed; and the philosophy of the ball-room compels us to acknowledge, that of the persons thus occupied, very few are capable of employing themselves to better purpose.
ON MUSIC.
THE first traces of music are to be found in Egypt, where musical instruments, capable of much variety and expression, existed, at a time when other nations were in an uncivilized state. The invention of the lyre is ascribed to Hermes Trismegistus, the Mercury of the Egyptians, which is a proof of its antiquity; but a still greater proof of the existence of musical instruments amongst them at a very early period, is drawn from the figure of an instrument said to be represented on an obelisk, erected, as is supposed, by Sesostris, at Heliopolis. This instrument, by means of its neck, was capable with only two strings, if tuned fourths, of furnishing that series of sounds, called by the ancients a heptachord; and if tuned fifths, of producing an octave.
As Moses was skilled in all the learning of the Egyptians, it is probable that the Israelites, who interwove music in all their religious ceremonies, borrowed much from that people. That the Greeks took their first ideas of music from the Egyptians is clear from this, that they ascribed the invention of the lyre to Mercury, although they made Apollo to be the god of music, and gave him that instrument to play upon. In no country was music so much cultivated as in Greece. The muses, as well as Apollo, Bacchus, and other gods and demi-gods, practised or promoted it in some way or other. Their poets are supposed to have been like the Celtic and German bards, and the Scalds of Iceland and Scandinavia, who went about singing their poems in the streets and the palaces of princes.
In this manner did. Orpheus, Homer, Hesiod, Sappho and others, recite their verses; and, in after times, on the institution of the games, Simonides, Pindar, and other poets, celebrated in public the exploits of the victors. The instruments known in the time of Homer, were the lyre, flute, syrinx, and trumpet. The invention of notation and musical characters is ascribed to Terpander, a poet and musician, who flourished 671 years before Christ. We afterwards find philosophers, as well as poets, among the number of those who admired and cultivated music, theoretically as well as practically, as Pythogoras, Plato, Aristotle, Aristozenus, Euclid and many others. Pythagoras is celebrated for his discoveries in this science, namely, for that of musical ratios, and the addition of an eighth string to the lyre. The former of these he is supposed to have derived from the Egyptians. He also explained the theory of sounds, and reduced it to a science. Aristozenus is the most ancient writer on music, of whose works there are any remains. Euclid followed up the idea of Pythagoras ' ratios,
which he reduced to a mathematical demonstration. To this list of Greek writers, may be added Nichomachus, Gerasenus, Alypius, Gaudentius, Bacchius, senior, Ptolemy the astronomer, and Aristides Quintillian, whose works are still extant. These wrote under the Roman Emperors, many of whom cultivated music, and followed the theory of the Greeks. Among the Roman writers may be reckoned Vitruvius, who in his architecture touches lightly on this subject; also Martianus Capella, and Boethius, who wrote in the decline of the empire. After them, some centuries elapsed before the science of music met with any particular attention. Its introduction into the church service prevented it from falling, like other arts, into total neglect. Instrumental music was introduced into the public service of the church under Constantine the Great. The practice of chanting the psalms was begun in the western churches, by St. Ambrose, about 350 years after Christ: 300 years after the method of chanting was improved by St. Gregory the Great. It was probably introduced into England by St. Augustine, and greatly improved by St. Dunstan. The use of the organ probably commenced in the Greek church, where it was called hydraulicon, or the water organ. The first organ known in Europe, was sent as a present to King Pepin, from the Emperor Constantine Compronymus. It came into general use in France, Germany, and England, in the tentli century. Soon after this, music began to be cultivated as a science, particularly in Italy, where Guido, a monk of Arezzo, first conceived the idea of counter-point, or the division of music into parts, by points set opposite to each other, and formed the scale afterwards known by the name of the gamut. This was followed by the invention of the time table, and afterwards by regular compositions of music. But the exercise of the art was for a long time confined to sacred music, during which period secular music was followed by itinerant poets and musicians, after the manner of the ancients. Of this description were the troubadours in France, the Welsh bards or harpers in England, and the Scotch minstrels.
INCIPIENT disorders of the teeth are too generally neglected. Every parent should, as an imperative duty, submit his child's mouth to the inspection of a judicious dentist at least twice a year. The amount of trouble and agony suffered from this species of negligence would, doubtless, startle and appal any one who could behold it in the aggregate. Yet what shameful cowards most men are in this respect. Day after day, month after month slips away, after they discover the inroads of decay, before they can muster resolution to set themselves in the dentist's chair; and too many procrastinate, till driven by intense anguish to the crisis; and then, instead of the slight operation that would have been originally necessary, are edified with the extraction of two or three, which earlier attention might have preserved.
