CHAPTER X.
YORK AND THE MAITLANDS.
There are difficulties in the way of one who would describe an event
after an immortal poet has given it a setting in lines that a
worshipping world will not willingly let die. A tree, it is said, is
never struck by lightning more than once, and it is safe to suppose
that a subject is never illumined by the rays of heaven-descended
genius without being as thoroughly exhausted. Nevertheless, with our
tame domestic lantern, let us endeavour to throw a little prosaic
light over the details of a scene that has been irradiated by the
imagination of a Byron.
It was one of the events of the season to the social world of that
foreign town, but to us it is one of the events of the century. On an
evening in June, 1815, in the city of Brussels, the Duchess of
Richmond gave a ball on so magnificent a scale that even the gray
heads of society's veteran devotees were a little turned, and the
chestnut and golden pates of their juniors tossed sleeplessly on their
pillows for several nights preceding it. After all, humanity is
perpetually and overpoweringly interested in nothing except humanity.
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