As I stood looking, with placid admiration, from a recess, upon a brilliant tableau of beautiful women and celebrated men that had accidentally arranged itself before me, Dalton touched my arm.

“I have seen,” said he, “aristocratic and republican reunions of the purest mode in Paris, the court and the banker’s circle of London, conversazioni at Rome and Florence.  Every face in this room is intelligent, and nearly all either beautiful, remarkable, or commanding.  Observe those five women standing with Denslow and Adonais,—­grandeur, sweetness, grace, form, purity; each has an attribute.  It is a rare assemblage of superior human beings.  The world cannot surpass it.  And, by the by, the rooms are superb.”

They were, indeed, magnificent:  two grand suites, on either side a central hall of Gothic structure, in white marble, with light, aerial staircases and gilded balconies.  Each suite was a separate miracle:  the height, the breadth, the columnal divisions; the wonderful delicacy of the arches, upon which rested ceilings frescoed with incomparable art.  In one compartment the arches and caryatides were of black marble; in another, of snowy Parian; in a third, of wood, exquisitely carved, and joined like one piece, as if it were a natural growth; vines rising at the bases of the walls, and spreading under the roof.  There was no forced consistency.  Forms suitable only for the support of heavy masses of masonry, or for the solemn effects of church interiors, were not here introduced.  From straight window-cornices of dark wood, slenderly gilt, but richly carved, fell cataracts of gleaming satin, softened in effect with laces of rare appreciation.

The frescoes and panel-work were a study by themselves, uniting the classic and modern styles in allegorical subjects.  The paintings, selected by the taste of Dalton, to overpower the darkness of the rooms by intensity of color, were incorporated with the walls.  There were but few mirrors.  At the end of each suite, one, of fabulous size, without frame, made to appear, by a cunning arrangement of dark draperies, like a transparent portion of the wall itself, extended the magnificence of the apartments.

Not a flame nor a jet was anywhere visible.  Tinted vases, pendent, or resting upon pedestals, distributed harmonies and thoughts of light rather than light itself; and yet all was visible, effulgent.  The columns which separated the apartments seemed to be composed of masses of richly-colored flames, compelled, by some ingenious alchemy, to assume the form and office of columns.

In New York, par excellence the city of private gorgeousness and petite magnificence, nothing had yet been seen equal to the rooms of the glorious Denslow Palace.  Even Dalton, the most capricious and critical of men, whose nice vision had absorbed the elegancies of European taste, pronounced them superb.  The upholstery and ornamentation were composed under the direction of celebrated artists.  Palmer was consulted on the marbles.  Page (at Rome) advised the cartoons for the frescoes, and gave laws for the colors and disposition of the draperies.  The paintings, panelled in the walls, were modern, triumphs of the art and genius of the New World.