MASQUERADE GENERALLY.
The masquerade fever exhausted itself last evening; but the
gilded European exotic went out in a blaze of
glory. We of the North are too matter-of-fact—too
civilized to appreciate the bal masqué.
It is a relic of barbarism. The custom thrives
better at the White Sulphur or at other provincial
border watering-places, where the
people have for a long time run to tournaments
and other fantastic ceremonies. As the
tournament died among sensible people with
Don Quixote, the Knight of La Mancha, so
the bal masqué ought to die with the Venetian
carnival. We see grand masquerades in
Moscow and St. Petersburg, but the Russians
are only half civilized. It is there, in Moscow,
where the Tartar hordes have left the traces of Asiatic barbarism,
that French or German extravaganzas culminate into gaudy
Eastern pageants.
