It was a company of undoubted gentlemen, as
truly entitled to respect and admiration as if they stood about a throne.
They were the untitled nobility of Nature, wealth, and genius.
As I stood looking, with placid admiration, from a recess, upon a
brilliant _tableau_ of beautiful women and celebrated men that had
accidentally arranged itself before me, Dalton touched my arm.
"I have seen," said he, "aristocratic and republican _reunions_ of the
purest mode in Paris, the court and the banker's circle of London,
_conversazioni_ at Rome and Florence. Every face in this room is
intelligent, and nearly all either beautiful, remarkable, or commanding.
Observe those five women standing with Denslow and Adonais,--grandeur,
sweetness, grace, form, purity; each has an attribute. It is a rare
assemblage of superior human beings. The world cannot surpass it. And, by
the by, the rooms are superb."
They were, indeed, magnificent: two grand suites, on either side a central
hall of Gothic structure, in white marble, with light, aerial staircases
and gilded balconies. Each suite was a separate miracle: the height, the
breadth, the columnal divisions; the wonderful delicacy of the arches,
upon which rested ceilings frescoed with incomparable art. In one
compartment the arches and caryatides were of black marble; in another, of
snowy Parian; in a third, of wood, exquisitely carved, and joined like one
piece, as if it were a natural growth; vines rising at the bases of the
walls, and spreading under the roof.
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