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We have before asserted that we must have known personally the women of Poland, for the full and intuitive comprehension of the feelings with which the Mazourkas of Chopin, as well as many more of his compositions, are impregnated.
Chopin must be ranked among the first musicians thus individualizing in themselves the poetic sense of an entire nation, not because he adopted the rhythm of POLONAISES, MAZOURKAS, and CRACOVIENNES, and called many of his works by such names, for in so doing he would have limited himself to the multiplication of such works alone, and would always have given us the same mode, the remembrance of the same thing; a reproduction which would soon have grown wearisome, serving but to multiply compositions of similar form, which must have soon grown more or less monotonous.
At the conclusion of the first Quadrille, the Baronet seated himself in the state chair, with his old friends on either side, for their dancing days like his own was now as a thing of the past, but looking on with inward satisfaction at the gay assembly, until the memories of their own youthful days rose pleasantly before them, the rare old wines of the choicest vintage, from the well-stored cellars of Vellenaux aiding to keep up these associations, as Waltzes, Polkas, Mazourkas, followed in rapid succession.
Lovel, who took a mild interest in the course of public affairs, and whose languid adherence to the Conservative party served to sustain discussion with Daniel Granger, who was a vigorous Liberal. After tea the visitor generally asked for music; and Clarissa would play her favourite waltzes and mazourkas, while the two gentlemen went on with their conversation.
What are we to think, then, of the delicacy which shrinks from the reading-room frequented by men; which discovers so suddenly that magazines are more embarrassing than mazourkas; that to read in a cloak and hat before a man is more indelicate than to waltz in his presence half denuded by fashion?
When an orchestra stops playing its waltzes and mazourkas of the latest fashion and takes up the strains of "Kathleen Mavourneen," "Oft in the Stilly Night," or "Robin Adair," one may readily observe a change come over the older part of the crowd who listen.
We would also examine his Polonaises, Mazourkas, Waltzes and Boleros. But this is not the time or place for such a study, which would be interesting only to the adepts in Counterpoint and Thoroughbass.
The bold and vigorous coloring of the Polonaises gives place to the most delicate, tender, and evanescent shades in the Mazourkas. A nation, considered as a whole, in its united, characteristic, and single impetus, is no longer placed before us; the character and impressions now become purely personal, always individualized and divided.
Then a siesta, and after drove to dine with our kind friends who procured permits for our admission to the "Fabrica del Tobago." After dinner to spend the evening with a Spanish family related to our mercurial friend, Don Cæsar de Bazan. Had dancing, polkas and mazourkas being especial favorites; singing also, and music from La Norma and Sonnambula, exquisitely performed.
She watches an interminable flock of sheep jump over a wall till her head spins. There always seem to be so many more where the last one came from. She listens to oar-beats, and drum-beats, and heart-beats. She improvises sonatas and gallopades, oratorios and mazourkas.
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