should take such dreary views of human nature. We, for our parts, all go
to Mrs. Potiphar's to refresh our faith in men and women. Generosity,
amiability, a catholic charity, simplicity, taste, sense, high
cultivation, and intelligence, distinguish our parties. The statesman
seeks their stimulating influence; the literary man, after the day's
labor, desires the repose of their elegant conversation; the
professional man and the merchant hurry up from down town to shuffle off
the coil of heavy duty, and forget the drudgery of life in the agreeable
picture of its amenities and graces presented by Mrs. Potiphar's ball.
Is this account of the matter, or _Vanity Fair_, the satire? What are
the prospects of any society of which that tale is the true history?

There is a picture in the Luxembourg gallery at Paris, _The Decadence of
the Romans_, which made the fame and fortune of Couture, the painter. It
represents an orgie in the court of a temple, during the last days of
Rome. A swarm of revellers occupy the middle of the picture, wreathed in
elaborate intricacy of luxurious posture, men and women intermingled;
their faces, in which the old Roman fire scarcely flickers, brutalized
with excess of every kind; their heads of dishevelled hair bound with
coronals of leaves, while, from goblets of an antique grace, they drain
the fiery torrent which is destroying them. Around the bacchanalian
feast stand, lofty upon pedestals, the statues of old Rome, looking,
with marble calmness and the severity of a rebuke beyond words, upon the
revellers. A youth of boyish grace, with a wreath woven in his tangled
hair, and with red and drowsy eyes, sits listless upon one pedestal,
while upon another stands a boy insane with drunkenness, and proffering
a dripping goblet to the marble mouth of the statue. In the corner of
the picture, as if just quitting the court--Rome finally departing--is a
group of Romans with care-worn brows, and hands raised to their faces in
melancholy meditation. In the foreground of the picture, which is