Loud pealed the exulting symphonies; loud sang the chosen minstrelsy—and as the gorgeous sun-beams rushed in a flood of tinted lustre through the rich many-colored panes of the tall windows, glancing on soft voluptuous forms and eyes that might out-dazzle their own radiance, arrayed in all the pomp and pride of that magnificent and stately period—a more resplendent scene could scarcely be imagined. That was a day of rich and graceful costumes, when men and warriors thought it no shame to be adorned in silks and velvets, with chains of goldsmith’s work about their necks, and jewels in their ears, and on their hatbands, buttons, and buckles, and sword-hilts; and if such were the sumptuous attire of the sterner and more solid sex, what must have been the ornature of the court ladies, under the gentle sway of such a being as Diane de Poitiers, the lovely mistress of the monarch, and arbitress of the soft follies of the Court? The palace halls were decked with every fanciful variety, some in the pomp of blazoned tapestries with banners rustling from the cornices above the jocund dancers, some filled with fresh green branches, wrought into silver arbors, sweet garlands perfuming the air, and the light half excluded or tempered into a mild and emerald radiance by the dense foliage of the rare exotics. Pages and ushers tripped it to and fro, clad in the royal liveries, embroidered with the cognizance of Henry, the fuigist salamander, bearing the choicest wines, the rarest cates, in every interval of the resounding dance.—It would be tedious to dwell longer on the scene; to multiply more instances of the strange mixture, which might be witnessed everywhere, of artificial luxury with semibarbarous rudeness—to specify the graces of the company, the beauty of the demoiselles and dames, the stately bearing of the warrior nobles, as they swept back and forth in the quaint mazes of some antiquated measure, were a task to be undertaken only by some old chronicler, with style as curious and as quaint as the manners he portrays in living colors.—Enough for us to catch a fleeting glimpse of the grand pageantry! to sketch with a dashy pencil the groups which he would designate with absolute and accurate minuteness!