Russia in 1839 -Empire of the Czar: A Journey Through Eternal Russia

252Л GROVE IN A BALL-ROOM.

several orchestras were executing military symphonies, and responding to each other with a harmony that was admirable. The light reflected on the trees bad u charming effect. Nothing is more fantastically beautiful than the golden verdure of foliage illuminated during a fine nio;ht.

The interior of the grand gallery in which thej danced was arranged with a marvellous luxury. Fifteen hundred boxes of the rarest plants in flower formed a grove of fragrant verdure. At one of the extremities of the hall, amid thickets of exotic plants, a fountain threw up a column of fresh and sparkling water : its spray, illumined by the innumerable wax lights, shone like the dust of diamonds, and refreshed the air, always kept in agitation by the movement of the dance. It might have been supposed that these strange plants, including large palms and bananas, all of whose boxes were concealed under a carpet of mossy verdure, grew in their native earth, and that the groups of northern dancers had been transported by enchantment to the forests of the tropics. It was like a dream ; there was not merely luxury in the scene, there was poetry. The brilliancy of the magic gallery was multiplied a hundred-fold by a greater profusion of enormous and richly gilded pier and other glasses than I had ever elsewhere seen. The windows ranged under the colonnade were left open on account of the excessive heat of the summer night. The hall was lofty, and extended the length of half the palace. The effect of all this magnificence may be better imagined than described. it seemed like the palace of the fairies : all ideas of limits disappeared, and nothing met the eye but space,