lost. Mr. Carmichael, in his report to the Crofter Commission, tells us how the Scottish Highlanders in bygone times had songs of love, and war, and hunting, and labour with which they accompanied themselves when rowing, shearing, spinning, milking, or grinding at the quern. The spread of education and the effacing hand of progress have wiped out all but the merest traces of them. But in Spain it is different. She is the Rip van Winkle of the European nations. With all her old traditions she has slumbered on through centuries. But for good or for evil the hand of progress is now laid upon her, and she will waken to forget them all as other

It is

nations have forgotten them. only by recording those couplets now that we can save them from oblivion, and then, unlike the Moor whom Washington Irving found by the fountain in the Alhambra, we shall not have to regret so bitterly the times when "they thought only of love and music and poetry. They made stanzas on every occasion, and set them all to music. He who could make the best verses, and she who had the most tuneful voice, might be sure of favour and preferment. In those days, if any one asked for bread, the reply was, 'Make me a couplet;' and the poorest beggar, if he begged in rhyme, would often be rewarded with a piece of gold."

THE incongruity of this title will doubtless strike many as laughable, or even absurd. To most people dancing and philosophy will probably seem as far asunder as the Poles. As a justification, I might plead that such incongruities are fashionable nowadays; that even shilling dreadfuls" won't sell without striking titles; and indeed, if I laid claim to any wit, I might call in Isaac Barrow to be my champion, who says that wit consists "in a startling metaphor, in a plausible reconciling of contradictions, or in acute nonsense.'

on no

But my case shall rest such unsatisfactory basis. No! I entirely deny any incongruity or absurdity in the phrase, philosophy of dancing. On the contrary, I maintain that dancing can be philosophically treated, and that the importance of such treatment can hardly be overrated. Dr. Tanner has proved that man can exist without food. Has it been proved that he can exist without dancing? Our has seen a philosophy of age clothes, and surely men are as much dancing as clothes-wearing animals?

All may not agree with the dancing

master in 'Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme that the destinies of the nations depend on the science of dancing; all may not acknowledge that the mistakes in the Soudan would not have occurred if the Cabinet had been chosen after the manner of the land of Lilliput; but still, when we remember how Hippoclides, the son of Tisander, lost a kingdom and a wife, by dancing a Greek can-can (anopyýraó γε μὴν τὸν γάμον, as Herodotus has it); and how, on the other hand, "daughters of men," meaning balletgirls, have won kingdoms and husbands by marrying "sons of God," to wit, peers of England; when we think

of these things, we cannot but own that in our day dancing does not receive the attention it merits.

In this, as in certain other arts (I use the word in its broadest sense), far from advancing, our age has receded. The history of an art has been likened to the history of a man-his childhood, his manhood, his dotage. The illustration has met with approval. Yet to me there seems no reason, why, on attaining its maturity, an art should begin to fade, to dwindle, to decay. In this year of grace, eighteen hundred and eighty-six, we do not look for originality, but may we not expect the excellence of a ripe maturity? After all, dotage is subjective. In the political world what may seem to some the waverings of a driveller and an idiot, are to others the natural issue of a grand old age.

In dancing, however, our retrogression is certain. In the youth of the world-I do not refer to the Glacial Period, nor yet to the Men of the Cave-in the days of the earlier civilisations of Asia, and later among the peoples of India, of China, of Japan, dancing was a religion. The Greeks, whose civilisation our own with all its boasting has hardly surpassed even materially (it is said that the inscriptions in Antioch talk of the artificial lighting of the streets, and the existence of a Press), acted very differently from us. With them dancing was a necessary part of education; to them a great dancer was a great man ; Socrates thought it not unworthy of his philosophy to learn the art in his old age; and

"The wise Thessalians ever gave The name of leader in their country's dance To him that had their country's governance." Yet even among the Greeks we find sure signs of a decadence; Lucian's

dialogue is a defence of dancing, not a panegyric. It is true that he proves dancing to be superior to tragedy, asserts that it is coëval with the world, that Troy was taken, that Zeus was saved, that Ariadne was ruined by a dance.

No more surely is needed to show the importance of my subject to those who, judging from the state of dancing at the present day, deem it a mere amusement. To those who object to it from moral or religious reasons, I say in the words of Lucian : 66 Come, tell me, my dear sir, with regard to dancing in the ball-room or at the theatre, do you censure it as one who has often seen it, or as one who knows nothing of such sights? You say you deem them disgraceful and to be spat upon. If indeed you have seen them, you have a right to your opinion (such as it is) as well as I; if not, beware, my orthodox friend, lest your censure may seem, in the eyes of worldlings, rash and unreasoning, as coming from one who prates about that of which he knows nothing." Go, my friends, go and be converted like Longfellow's Cardinal.

Let me not be thought to claim to be the first to call attention to the importance of dancing and its culpable neglect among us. Of those who have recognised this, I may mention Noverre and Davies. My sole title to originality lies in my method.

To those who are not very deeply read in the earlier English poets, the existence of a poem entitled' Orchestra,' by Sir John Davies, one time Chief Justice of Ireland, may be unknown. His Nosce Teipsum' is familiar to most students, by name at all events. His less known work, though not mentioned by Hallam, is in many ways most interesting. Written in a peculiar but easy-flowing stanza of seven lines, it illustrates by many ingenious analogies the origin and importance of dancing, establishing its existence and effects, and tracing in it all the motions of Nature.

No. 325.-vol. LV.

"For what are Breath, Speech, Echoes, Music, Winds,

But Dancings of the Ayre in Sundry
Kinds?"

Noverre displays none of the mysticism which pervades this very ingenious and imaginative poem. His treatment is less ethereal and more practical. He argues that dancing is the one important thing in life; that to be a successful dancer, a man must be everything and know everything ; that, in a word, dancing connotes everything. The converse, that to know anything or be anything one must be a dancer, or, to put it in a logical form, 'Everything denotes dancing," Noverre does not seem to have recognised.

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An exhaustive treatment of so wide a subject as that of dancing will not here be attempted. It will content me to briefly indicate the methods, historical and scientific, by which future seekers after truth must proceed. Those

who still believe that there is some historical reality at the bottom of every myth, however altered by tradition or embellished by poetic fancy, will be interested in the different claims to the invention of dancing which appear in different mythologies. It has, by the way, been suggested to me that in this context resuscitation were a better word than invention: for dancing, some hold, was in the world before man, and was carried by our ancestors the apes to a higher elevation than it has ever reached since. The other day, while in а mythological mood hesitating between Greek nymphs and Gothic fairies, balancing the rights of Terpsichore and Fin McCoul, a lucky and providential accident-the discovery of an old book, entitled 'A treatise against Dauncing made Dialoguewise by John Northbroke '-turned my uncertainty into a blissful feeling of relief.

The author, after duly examining all the evidence, thus sums up: "But whatsoever these saye, St. Chrysostom, an ancient father, sayth that it came first from the devill."

F

This was satisfactory. His Satanic Majesty (it is well in these days to be punctilious about titles) is undoubtedly older than Fin, and most probably older than Terpsichore. For to put it syllogistically:

Medusa lived before Terpsichore; The Devil was coeval with Medusa;

(As Lamb says:

"The feast being ended, to dancing they went,

To a music that did produce a

Most dissonant sound, while a hellish glee Was sung in parts by the Furies Three,

And the Devil took out Medusa.")

... The Devil lived (and danced) before Terpsichore.

The only doubtful part of the syllogism is whether the first proposition is true or not. However, I have gone with the consensus of opinion.

After paying due respect to the inventor of dancing, it seemed suitable to investigate the time when and the reasons why. Here again I am indebted to a predecessor who traces "the origin and invention of this dissolute and lascivious exercise to the devils in hell, what time the Israelites, after feasting and gorging themselves with wine, fell to dancing around the molten calf in the desert.'

The classification of dances is a much more difficult task. The following is purely tentative: comprehensiveness is perhaps all it can boast of.

There are three classes or kinds of dances. The first class includes all dances in which the dancers are of the same sex, and dance in bands. Mr. Northbroke recognises this class, but seems to restrict it to those solemn exercises through which school-girls stalkcalisthenics, as the prospectuses call them nowadays. In this class, however (which my predecessor puts first, as the most innocent, I, through gallantry), we must include the choric parts of ballets. The second class is that of mixed dances. The dancers still dance in bands, but there is no limitation of sex. My reverend friend rather unkindly speaks of this class as

"instituted only for pleasure and wantonnesse sake." The animus which he displays all through his treatise might be put down to physical inability, had he not foreseen that such an accusation might arise, and written, "My age is not the cause nor my inhabilitie the reason thereof." Lord Byron's reason for writing his diatribe is only too obvious. Before proceeding to the third class, I venture to suggest that this, the second class, might be subdivided into square and round dances. By the way, Mr. Northbroke's opinion as to the invention of round dances is rather amusing. Women, he says, invented them that

66

holding upon men's arms they may hop the higher." The third class consists of those dances in which one individual dances alone. In the near future I purpose to enlarge upon and exemplify these classes, by enumerating, age by age, country by country, race by race, all the dances that have been in vogue, that are still in vogue, and, by a process of induction, all the dances that are likely to be in vogue, among men. It will be a subject of infinite interest, and of infinite length. A friend of mine, indeed, a learned doctor, has left me a work in manuscript in which he labours to show that national character is to be best seen in the national dances; that, as the Irishman (my friend was a Celt) faces his partner in the national jig, so is he straightforward in love and war. However, I must for the present leave this, the more strictly historical part of my subject, and proceed to the more purely scientific.

It seems to me that there is something subtler, something more real in dancing than these rather superficial distinctions-interesting as they may be to the ordinary observer, useful as they must be to one who is treating dancing from a merely historical stand-point. All human knowledge, we are told, is relative; so is all dancing. In dancing, as in everything else, there is an ideal, an ideal

The dances included in the first class, "Pyrrhica saltatio," were in ancient times entirely religious. The gambols of the Salvationists form the only parallel among us. The secular element has invaded the other representatives of this class-calisthenics, and the choruses in the ballets; in the former the end is health, in the latter the earning of money, or something else, which ought to be equally subsidiary. Plainly it is not in this class that we are to look for dancing for dancing's sake.

There is more difficulty in dealing with the claims of the second classthat of mixed dancing. It will be said that many people waltz for waltzing's sake; waltz and dance are almost synonymous terms nowadays. If, after the manner of Socrates, I ask, as one ignorant of such things, What is meant by "for waltzing's sake"? the answer will in all probability be, "Oh, for the pleasure merely." We will not go into the question as to whether the attainment of pleasure is the ideal end of dancing. That shall be left quite open. Indeed, one must perforce acknowledge that, if a person dances purely for the pleasure he gets in dancing, and is entirely regardless of the person with whom he dances, and all other externals, such a person is much nearer to the ideal than other less ascetic individuals. But is such a course of conduct practicable? That it was not usual in Mr. Northbroke's day, some two hundred years ago, is clear. "Why

are men desirous more to daunce rather with this woman, than with that woman? And why are women so desirous rather to choose this man than that man to daunce withall?" Our spelling may have changed since then we spell daunce without a u—but our ways are very much the same. For, consider how such a dancer would act in a ball-room. Recognising the unseemliness of dancing alone, he would find it necessary to get a partner. This may seem easy in his case, as it will not matter whether she be plain or pretty, young or old, silent or talkative, provided she can dance. But looking into it more closely we find that all these adjuncts do exert a certain influence, an influence that would injure ideal purity of dancing. Beauty would attract, ugliness disgust. Youth is untrained, age is over-trained. With a silent partner one must talk, with a loquacious partner one must (still worse) listen. However, supposing our dancer overcomes these distractions; supposing he chooses his partner (or should it be rather opponent in these days of fast waltzes and faster flirtations?) after the advice of Jenyns:

"But let not outward charms your judgment sway,

Your reason rather than your eyes obey,
And in the dance, as in the marriage noose,
Rather for merit than for beauty choose:
Be her your choice, who knows with perfect
skill,

When she should move, and when she
should be still,

Who uninstructed can perform her share And kindly half the pleasing burden bear": supposing that the rooms are large, and the crush mild; supposing the music is perfect, supposing the floor is smooth-a goodly lot of suppositions truly-nay, supposing he passes through a dance in reverential silence; how is our ideal friend to conduct himself in the intervals? He is expected to talk, in many instances to flirt, or-but may the gods avert itto spoon, as the youth in Mr. Northbroke's dialogue, evidently prompted by the chaperons of that time, says: