CHAPTER XVIII.
THE MASQUERADE.
To form one's impression of a masked ball from the attempts at this mode of entertainment in our country, is but to conceive a most imperfect and erroneous notion.

With us, the first _coup d'oeil_ is everything; the nuns, the shepherdesses, the Turks, sailors, eastern princes, watchmen, moonshees, milestones, devils, and Quakers are all very well in their way as they pass in the review before us, but when we come to mix in the crowd, we discover that, except the turban and the cowl, the crook and the broad-brim, no further disguise is attempted or thought of.

The nun, forgetting her vow and her vestments, is flirting with the devil; the watchman, a very fastidious elegant, is ogling the fishwomen through his glass; while the Quaker is performing a _pas seul_ Alberti might be proud of, in a quadrille of riotous Turks and half-tipsy Hindoos; in fact, the whole wit of the scene consists in absurd associations.

Apart from this, the actors have rarely any claims upon your attention; for even supposing a person clever enough to sustain his character, whatever it be, you must also supply the other personages of the drama, or, in stage phrase, he'll have nothing to "play up to." What would be Bardolph without Pistol; what Sir Lucius O'Triuger without Acres?
It is the relief which throws out the disparities and contradictions of life that afford us most amusement; hence it is that one swallow can no more make a summer, than one well-sustained character can give life to a masquerade.

Without such sympathies, such points of contact, all the leading features of the individual, making him act and be acted upon, are lost; the characters being mere parallel lines, which, however near they approach, never bisect or cross each other.
This is not the case abroad: the domino, which serves for mere concealment, is almost the only dress assumed, and the real disguise is therefore thrown from necessity upon the talents, whatever they be, of the wearer.