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
painted with all the sumptuous splendor of Venetian art, is a stately
vase, around which hangs a festoon of gorgeous flowers, its end
dragging upon the pavement. In the background, between the columns,
smiles the blue sky of Italy--the only thing Italian not deteriorated
by time. The careful student of this picture, if he has been long in
Paris, is some day startled by detecting, especially in the faces of
the women represented, a surprising likeness to the women of Paris,
and perceives, with a thrill of dismay, that the models for this