The animated scenes attending his landing at Castle Garden, upon a carpeted stairway, under a magnificent arch, richly decorated with flags and wreaths of laurel, while groups of escorting vessels, alive with ladies and gentlemen, and adorned in the most fanciful manner, circled about; and the prolonged shouts of hosts of people, and the roar of cannon echoed far away over the waters, together with the parade in Broadway, the reception at City Hall, the speeches, the banquet, and the illumination -- are

Festivals and Pageants 47

all more familiar to the public of to-day than many other features of the historic visit. Lafayette spent Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday in shaking hands and sight-seeing in New York, and on Friday, August 20, left for Providence and Boston.

New York had occupied itself in the interval between General Lafayette's departure for Boston and his return in preparing for a celebration that should make all previous celebrations pale their ineffectual fires. It was to take place at Castle Garden on the 14th of September, and was under the immediate supervision of Generals Mapes, Morton, Fleming, and Benedict, and Colonel W. H. Maxwell, Colonel King, Mr. Colden, and Mr. Lynch. The sedate Evening Post even broke into expressions of rapture at the result.

We hazard nothing [it affirmed] in saying that it was the most magnificent fete given under cover in the world. ... It was a festival that realises all that we read of in the Persian tales or Arabian Nights, which dazzled the eye and bewildered the imagination, and which produced so many powerful combinations, by magnificent preparations, as to set description almost at defiance. We never saw ladies more brilliantly dressed -- everything that fashion and elegance could devise was used on the occasion. Their head-dresses were principally of flowers, with ornamented combs, and some with plumes of ostrich feathers.