THE DANCES. 
789 
children of different ages in the arms of as many gabbling maid¬ 
servants, and the shuffling about of some forty or fifty Arnauts 
and male attendants, who occupied half the lower end of the 
saloon, and never were quiet one minute. But the ball began, 
and all was noise of another kind. The impatient dancers were on 
the floor in a moment. The huge caps of the boyars were thrown 
off; their splendid pelisses followed the same fate ; and each 
former inhabitant of such panoply of vast magnificence, appeared 
suddenly by the side of his intended partner, in a smart tasty 
jacket of red, grey, or other colours, fancifully embroidered. This 
tighter vest gracefully fitting the shape, did not mingle ill with 
the more flowing drapery of the skirt below, which was bound 
round the middle by a splendid shawl; neither was any part 
of this easy dress discordant with the elastic movements of the 
dance. But the remainder was not quite in such youthful 
harmony. Every man had a shaven head, on which he wore a 
little red skull-cap, exposing much of the bald scalp behind and 
before, also “ his fair large ears which, with the addition of 
mustachios and beards of every tint and bristle, give the whole 
group so odd an appearance, that when they capered in quadrilles 
and cotillions, or shuffled down the English country-dance, or 
whirled in all the dizzy velocity of the waltz, nothing could 
picture a more grotesque scene. Asiatic heads, Italian figurante 
bodies, Austrian, English, and other simply coated foreign 
residents, with the ladies all attired in Parisian or Russian 
modes, could not but present a constantly moving spectacle, so 
like the masquerade figures in a magic lanthorn, I can never 
recollect them without a smile. Besides the novel importation 
of the dances I have just mentioned, we had some specimens 
from Greece, and others of the native Valachian. The latter 
