disaster and defeat.  The melodies breathe more and more the perfume of happy youth; love, young love, sighs around.  Expanding into expressive songs of vague and dreamy character, they speak but to youthful hearts, cradling them in poetic fictions, in soft illusions.  No longer destined to cadence the steps of the high and grave personages who ceased to bear their part in these dances, [Footnote:  Bishops and Primates formerly assisted in these dances; at a later date the Church dignitaries took no part in them.] they are addressed to romantic imaginations, dreaming rather of rapture than of renown.  Meyseder advanced upon this descending path; his dances, full of lively coquetry, reflect only the magic charms of youth and beauty.  His numerous imitations have inundated us with pieces of music, called Polonaises, out which have no characteristics to justify the name.

The pristine and vigorous brilliancy of the Polonaise was again suddenly given to it by a composer of true genius.  Weber made of it a Dithyrambic, in which the glittering display of vanished magnificence again appeared in its ancient glory.  He united all the resources of his art to ennoble the formula which had been so misrepresented and debased, to fill it with the spirit of the past; not seeking to recall the character of ancient music, he transported into music the characteristics of ancient Poland.  Using the melody as a recital, he accentuated the rhythm, he colored his composition, through his modulations, with a profusion of hues not only suitable to his subject, but imperiously demanded by it.  Life, warmth, and passion again circulated in his Polonaises, yet he did not deprive them of the haughty charm, the ceremonious and magisterial dignity, the natural yet elaborate majesty, which are essential parts of their character.  The cadences are marked by chords, which fall upon the ear like the rattling of swords drawn from their scabbards.  The soft, warm, effeminate pleadings of love give place to the murmuring of deep, fall, bass voices, proceeding from manly breasts used to command; we may almost hear, in reply, the wild and distant neighings of the steeds of the desert, as they toss the long manes around their haughty heads, impatiently pawing the ground, with their lustrous eye beaming with intelligence and full of fire, while they bear with stately grace the trailing caparisons embroidered with turquoise and rubies, with which the Polish Seigneurs loved to adorn them. [Footnote:  Among the treasures of Prince radziwill at Nieswirz were to be seen, in the days of former splendor, twelve sets of horse trappings, each of a different color, incrusted with precious stones.  The twelve Apostles, life size, in massive silver, were also to be seen there.  This luxury will cease to astonish us when we consider that the family of Radziwill was descended from the last Grand Pontiff of Lithuania, to whom, when he embraced Christianity, were given all the forests and plains which had before been consecrated