The dancing wanted that _gaieté du cœur_ which alone renders it an agreeable and animating amusement. The ladies glided like silver eels, and the gentlemen groped about the room as if their eyes were shut, so that absolutely, if a stranger had been introduced, who never saw a modern ball-room before, he might have been excused for imagining that the dancers were playing blind man’s buff, and afraid of knocking their heads against the panels, if they moved their bodies without the utmost circumspection. In short, a child of nature would wonder why people should take the trouble of submitting their feet to a sort of _rhythm_ just enough to shackle their freedom, and prevent the luxury of perfect inanition. Well, thought I to myself, this society is _fashionable_. These men and women move in what is called the first circle. The former will, many of them, become our Members of Parliament; senators, by whose collective wisdom we are to be directed. These asses in human form, the most idle, ignorant, effeminate animals possible to conceive, are to be husbands, fathers, landlords, masters! It is a melancholy prospect, and in looking to my own sex, on thoughts of which my mind from infancy has dwelt with pride and pleasure, as the sweet depository of religion, morals, fond affections, taste and talents softened down to social converse, and illuminating the domestic sphere, oh, what a contrast meets my eye! what will these creatures be when all that art can do to whiten the poor sepulchre shall fail, and wrinkles insurmountable _will_ raise their fearful lines of circumvalation round the once bright orbs? when rouge itself, the last faithful handmaid of departing beauty, no longer sticks to the haggard cheek, no longer lights up the extinguished eye; when the ethereal form of finished symmetry is either swelled to the mountain size of those round matrons who in vain would try to grasp the pedal harp which shuns the corpulent embrace, or dwindled to the bony frame which only serves for draperies to be hung upon? What will be the fate of these hapless wrecks of vanished youth, when even cards, the ultimate resource of age, the last strong hold of veteran nothingness, shall cease to charm? Oh, my Julia, how will these miserable beings tremble, as the grave yawns beneath their feet! Eternity awaits all these butterflies, whether male or female; and I shudder, as imagination presents the grisly group of coxcombs, and of belles, stripped of their paint and patches, wigs, and waltzes, and standing to receive the final sentence at an Almighty tribunal.