ened into beauty when the principle which it embodies has been acquired. Once let the pupil appreciate that his feet are to obey his body, not his body his feet, and he may profitably be taught such steps as will render this subjection easy and graceful.
I venture to think that most good dancers will agree with the view which I have urged above, and that, even if the theory has not been present to their minds, they have unconsciously conformed to it in practice. But there is another argument in its support, which is to be found in the character of modern waltz-music. The four steps of the deux temps waltz are accurately provided for in the music, of which a galop is perhaps the best modern specimen. I pass over what is still sometimes called in England the "old" trois temps, with its awkward and meaningless syncopation of the second beat, as a hybrid production, without form and void. But compare the trois temps waltz of the present day with the deux temps, and it is seen at once that the bar of the former contains no provision for specific steps. Its whole essence is not step, but rhythm, and rhythm inspired by a melody which, whether melting into languor or swelling into passion, never falters in its measure or loses the magic of its sway.
Of the other dances which still find a place in the programme not much need be said. They have certain merits and undoubtedly certain uses, but from a purely dancing point of view they are not in sympathy with the genius of the age. The Lancers and the quadrille still appear, like extinct volcanoes, mighty in their decay. They are harmless concessions to Mrs. Grundy; and for the Philistine, whose carnal appetites are imperfectly subdued, they offer a convenient opportunity for supper. A polka is often described as "capital fun," and so it is in its way. Yet, if it be judged by the rhythm test of daring criticism, that horrible hiatus on the fourth beat would go far to condemn it. Scotch dances stand in a category by themselves, to which the ordinary canons do not apply. They are sometimes very effective, and are capable of considerable artistic development. But on general principles their violence is against them. Without any slavish reverence for the repose that stamps the caste of Vere de Vere, one may be pardoned for thinking that the feminine grace and refinement which is so dear to all true men suffers somewhat in the romp and hooting of the Highland schottische, with its uncomely incidents of flushed face and towzled hair. Moreover, these dances are a curious anachronism. Originally no doubt they were war-dances, and they still show traces of their parentage. In Bon Graultier's amusing ballad we are told that, at the close of a certain battle,
Whic-Mac-Methuselah
Gave some warlike howls,
Trew his skhian-dhu,
An stuck it in his powels.
This was no doubt very proper under the special circumstances; but since disembowelling has ceased to obtain as a form of conviviality, the barbaric yells of the schottische lose much of their point in a modern salon.
If, therefore, we review the dancing of the present century philosophically, it will seem that we have passed from a stage wherein the ideal of excellence was a precision of step to a stage wherein the ideal is a rhythm of movement; and it would hardly be an exaggeration to describe this transition as the exchange of an accomplishment for an inspiration. It is easy to refer phenomena of this kind to the caprice of fashion, but for philosophy caprice does not exist, and fashion itself bows obediently to natural law. Dancing may seem to us so slight a matter that to subject it to a solemn philosophical investigation is like pounding a butterfly with a Nasmyth hammer. But the smallest straws often show best how the wind blows, and dancing, trivial though it be, has something to teach us if we care to learn. No argument is needed nowadays to prove the correlation of mind and body; and this correlation obtains universally throughout the energies of our organism, though we cannot
