ART. III.-ON DANCING. [New Monthly Magazine—March, 1821.] A good man's fortune may be out at heels. SHAKSPEARE. WERE a book to be written upon the discordant opinions held by different nations, or by the same people at different periods, upon any given subject, none would present a more contradictory estimate, than the harmless recreation of dancing. For some thousand of years, in the early stages of the world, it was exclusively a religious ceremony. The dance of the Jews, established by the Levitical law to be exhibited at their solemn feasts, is, perhaps, the most ancient upon record. The dancing of David is also frequently quoted; and many commentators have thought, that every Psalm was accompanied by a distinct dance. In several of the temples, a stage was specially erected for these exercises; but, in process of time, they seem to have been practised by secular, as well as spiritual performers. The daughters of Shiloh were thus recreating themselves in the vineyards, when they were caught by the young men of the tribe of Benjamin, who presently danced into their good graces, and carried them off for wives-a process, which is frequently imitated, even in these degenerate days. The heathens, also, could "sport a toe," in the very earliest ages. Pindar calls Apollo "the dancer;" Homer, in one of his hymns, tells us, that this deity capered to the music of his own harp; and from Callimachus we learn, that the Nereides were proficients in this elegant accomplishment, at the early age of nine years. For several centuries, it was confined to military movements, when a battle was a grand Ballet of Action, opposing armies became partners in the dance of death, and cut throats and capers with equal assiduity. Since those truculent and operatic days, it has been limited to festive and joyous occasions; but how various the estimation in which it has been held by inconsistent mortals! Socrates, a wise Grecian, took lessons in this art from Aspasia. Cicero, an enlightened Roman, urges the practice of dancing against Galbinius, as a grave and heinous offence. Of the moderns, many hold it an utter abomination to dance upon a Sunday; while others signalize the Sabbath by an increased hilarity of heel. In Germany, a band of enthusiastic damsels formerly testified their devotion to St. Vitus, by dancing round his shrine, until they contracted a malady, which still bears his name: the modern Herrnhuters, of the same district, would suffer martyrdom rather than heathenize their legs by any similar profanation. * See the Vestriad, a mock Epic Poem. 21 * Our own country, at the present moment, possesses a sect of Jumpers [or shakers,] who, seeming to imagine that he, who leaps highest, must be nearest to Heaven, solemnize their meetings by jumping like kangaroos, and justify themselves very con clusively from Scripture, because-David danced before the Ark-the daughter of Shiloh danced in the yearly festival of the Lord-and the child John, the son of Elizabeth, leapt before it was born! The Methodists, on the other hand, main. tain, in its full latitude, the doctrine of the ancient Waldenses and Albigenses, that as many paces as a man makes in dancing, so many leaps he makes towards Hell. Even the amiable Cowper, the poet, suffered his fine mind to be so darkened by bigotry, as to believe, that a great proportion of the ladies and gentlemen, whom he saw amusing themselves with dancing at Brighthelmstone, must necessarily be damned ;* and in a religious publication, now before me, I find it stated, that a sudden judgment overtook a person for indulging in this enormity; a large lump started up in his thigh while dancing; but upon his solemn promise not to repeat the offence, the Lord heard his prayer, and removed his complaint. A writer in the same work, after denouncing those who admit "dancing and other vain amusements into their schools," concludes with an alarming belief, "that this dancing propensity has, in some places, nearly danced the Bible out of the school!" In conformity with these enlightened views, and in defiance of the sacred writer, who expressly declares that there is a time to dance, the Methodists exclude from their communion all those who practise dancing, or teach it to children, while their ministers refuse to administer the Sacrament to all persons guilty of frequenting balls. Let us hope that the increasing good sense of these well-meaning, but misguided ascetics, will speedily get the better of such monkish austerities; that the time may come when they may feel persuaded that our Heavenly Father can contemplate this innocent recreation of his creatures with as much benignity as a parent beholds the gambols of his children; and that the now gloomy inmates of the Tabernacle may justify the change, by adopting the beautiful sentiment of Addison"Cheerfulness is the best Hymn to the Deity." I do not despair of seeing a whole brotherhood and sisterhood standing up in pairs for a country-dance, all anxious to make amends for lost time; while he, who is to lead off, ciaps his yellow gloves in ecstacy, and calls aloud to the band to play up Wesley's-Fancy, or the Whitfield Reel. I abhor that atrocious and impious doctrine, that France and England are natural enemies; as if God Almighty had made us "Hayley's Life, p. 100. Evangelical Magazine, August, 1812. ‡ Ibid. June, 1808. only to cut one another's throats; and yet I must say that I hate the French, and hate them too on account of one of their most elegant accomplishments-their inexhaustible genius for inventing dances. With the fertility of their ballet-masters, I have no quarrel: let them attitudinize till they have twisted the human form into as many contortions as Fuseli; let them vary figures and combinations ad infinitum, like the kaleidoscope; let them even appropriate distinct movements to each class of the human and super-human performers. I admit the propriety of their celebrated pas called the Gargouillade, which, as a French author informs us, is devoted to the entree of winds, damons, and elementary spirits, and of whose mode of execution, he gravely proceeds to give an elaborate and scientific description. But why, Mr. Editor, why must their vagaries quit their proper arena, the opera stage, and invade our ball-rooms and assemblies? Sir, they have kicked me out of dancing society full twenty years before my time. The first innovation, that condemned me to be a spectator, where I used to be a not undistinguished performer, was the sickening and rotatory Waltz; of which I never saw the object, unless its votaries meant to form a contrast to the lilies of the valley, "which toil not, neither do they spin." Waiving all objections upon the ground of decorum, surely the young men and women of the present age were giddy enough before, without the stimulus of these fantastical gyrations. If a fortune-hunter chooses to single out an heiress, and spin round and round with her, like a billiard-ball, merely to get into her pocket at last, there is at least a definable object in his game; but that a man should volunteer these painful circumvolutions for pleasure, really seems to be a species of saltatory suicide. I never saw the figurantes at the opera whirling their pirouettes, like whipping-tops, without wishing to be near them with a stout thong, that I might keep up the resemblance; and as to imitating their ungraceful roundabouts, by joining in a waltz, I would rather be a tetotum at once, or one of the front wheels of Mrs. C――y's carriage. Thanks to the goddess of fashion, fickle as she is foolish, our ball-room misses have at length ceased to be twisted and twirled in this unmerciful manner, and our spinning jennies are again pretty nearly confined to Manchester and Glasgow. Tired as I was of sitting like a spondee, with my two long feet hanging idle on my hands, (as a noble Viscount would say,) I began now to entertain hopes of again planting my exploded heel upon a chalked board. But, alas! I was doomed to experience, that there are as many disappointments between the toe and the ground, as between the cup and the lip. France, my old enemy, was upon the watch to export a new annoyance: the Genius of Quadrille started up from amid the roses painted on a ball-room floor, and my discomfited legs were again compelled to resume their inglorious station beneath the benches. I could not put them into a go-cart, and begin all my steps again: I could not make a toil of a pleasure, rehearse beforehand, and study my task by card and compass, merely to make an exhibition of myself at last. It was too like amateur acting; the constraint of a ballet, without its grace or skill-the exertion of dancing, without its hilarity; and it was moreover an effort, in which I was sure to be eclipsed by every boardingschool miss or master, who would literally learn that by heart, which 1, in my distaste to these innovations, could only expect to learn by foot. In this melancholy and useless plight, do I wander from one ball room to another, dancing nothing but attendance, and kicking nothing but my heels; sometimes. like a tripod that has lost a leg, leaning disconsolately against the wall, because I cannot stand up in my proper place; and sometimes beating time to the music with my foot, which is as bitter a substitute for genuine jumps, as is the coculus Indicus for real hops. Oh, for the days that are gone!-the golden age of cocked hats; the Augustan era of country-dance; the apotheosis of minuet! How well do I remember the first night I ventured upon the latter, that genuine relic of the old French court.What an awful recollection have I of the trying moment, when, with a slow and graceful curve of my arm, I first deposited the triangular beaver upon my powdered locks, pressing it down upon my forehead, with a firm determination to look fierce and fascinating, and yet with a tender and sympathetic regard for the economy of my elaborate curls; somewhat in the style recommended by old Isaac Walton, when in instructing you to impale a worm for angling, he bids you handle him tenderly withal, and treat him like a friend. The scented pulvilio, which the untwisted hairs reproachfully effused, still seems to salute my nose, and flutter between my eyes, and the dipping and swimming figure of my partner. With what pride I led her to her seat, and what a bewitching bow I flattered myself I had made, when she blushed into her chair! In those happy days, the next operation was a regular and persevering set-to, at the genuine old English country-dance; and the amusements of the night were invariably wound up by the Boulanger, or Sir Roger de Coverley. One of my nieces played me those exploded tunes a few days ago, and what a flush of rosy recollections did they conjure up! Their music seemed to penetrate into the quiet caves and grottoes of memory, awakening ideas that had long slumbered undisturbed. Methought they issued from their recesses like so many embodied sprites; and, fastening their flow ery wreaths to the spokes of Time's great wheel, they dragged it rapidly backward, until the days of my youth became evolved before me in all the fidelity and vividness of their first existence. Then did I again behold the rich Miss B, the sugar-baker's daughter, whom my parents invariably urged me to engage for the supper-dances, with many a shrewd hint that a partner at a ball often became a partner for life;-nor was her corpulent mother omitted, who carried vanity so far as even to affect a slight degree of palsy, that the motion of her head might give a more dazzling lustre to the magnificent diamonds with which it was thickly studded. I see her now, at her old place in the card-room, shaking and sparkling like an aspen-tree in the sunshine of a white frost. I behold, also, the bustling little old man her father, receiving the tickets of admission in all the pomp of office, with his snuff-coloured suit, and the powdered and pomatumed peak coming to a point in the centre of his bald head. As for the daughter. thank Heaven, I never danced with her but once, and my mind's eye still beholds her webby feet paddling down the middle, with the floundering porpus-like fling she gave at the end, only accomplished by bearing half her weight upon her partner, and invariably out of tune. What a contrast was the accomplished, the fascinating Fanny -, with her lovely features irradiated with innocent hilarity, yet tempered with sentiment, and deep feeling. She was all intelligence-spiritual-ethereal; at least, I often thought so, as her sylph-like form seemed to be treading upon air, while it responded spontaneously to every pulsation of the music, like a dancing echo. "The course of true love never did run smooth:" Fanny became portionless-1 was pennyless; yet even despair did not prevent my loving her; and though my tongue never gave utterance to the thought, I am well aware that she read it in my eyes, and gave me in return her pity. With this I was contented-in the romance of a first love, I thought it would be delightful to die for her, and I sent her a song,-but she never noticed my effusion, though she never returned it. Fanny! she fell a sacrifice to one of those pests of society, a dangler, a male coquet; who paid her his addresses, won her affections, changed his mind, and married another-the scoundrel! Her pride might have borne the insult, but her love could not be recalled her heart was broken. Her fine mind began to prey upon itself the sword wore out the scabbard-her frame gradually faded away, and a rapid decline at length released her from her uncomplaining misery. I followed her to the grave; and how often did I return to the spot to bedew it with my tears! Many a vow have I made to suppress my unavailing grief, and refrain from visiting the place of her burial; when, in the very Poor |