Besides the ball-room, many handsome apartments are thrown open, through which people promenade; and if you will but push aside the curtains there are balconies where one can look down, by moonlight, on the lakes and fountains of the gardens, “the watery ways of palaces.”  I do not think the balconies are much occupied:  they are a trifle too romantic for British mammas.  But there is plenty of flirting in the halls and alcoves.  One room I remember very pleasantly, the refreshment-room, which was kept open during the evening till supper-time.  There one could get sandwiches, cold coffee, champagne, sherry, etc., without having to hurry or be greedy in the least.  I can’t say so much for the supper, though by waiting a little one could always get something.  The princes went first, then the diplomatists, and then everybody else.  The jostling was such that when young ladies asked for a plate of soup you wished they had wanted ham and chicken.  A young American, I think, would very much dislike to go up to a table and eat a solitary supper with ladies looking on, and young and pretty ones, too.  But I have seen a young guardsman, with an enormous helmet and boots as big as himself, stand up at the table and “solitary and alone” work his jaws with such effect as to shake and set trembling the whole of his paraphernalia.  Behind him pressed other hungry courtiers, whom his gigantic helmet shut out from even the possibility of supper, and who revenged themselves by sarcastic congratulations aside upon the length and heartiness of his meal.

“Concert” is an expression which to a hungry man has a strong suggestion of tea and maccaroons.  But a court concert gives you such a supper as only a night’s dancing is ordinarily supposed to entitle you to.  The concerts are given in the ball-room of the palace, and are much more select than the balls.  The royalties occupy very slight gilt chairs placed just before the orchestra.  There they sit with grace and an appearance of comfort through the whole of it, while happier and humbler mortals may walk about and whisper, or seek the refreshment-room, or look at the pictures.  They have very good music, the best singers are provided, and some pretty familiar songs, like “Home, sweet home,” are sung.

Before the royalties lead the way to supper they step forward to the bar which divides the orchestra from the audience and say a few civil things to each of the prominent artists, who in their turn bow and look very much delighted.  I wonder that singers who are almost queens when they come to American cities, who have here any amount of praise and attention entirely free from patronage, and who even in European capitals may have excellent society, should be willing to put themselves in such a position.  While the social status of musical artists has not been raised relatively in the last quarter of a century, and while that of the theatrical profession has been indeed, in London at least, relatively lowered, reason is gradually curing