as well
as to songs, being a kind of small dramatic compositions, or
what may properly be called _ballads_, which is a true word for
a song at once sung and danced: _ballare_ signifying to dance;
and _ballata_, a song, composed to be danced. It is probable
that from these eastern kind of dances, which are undoubtedly
very antient, came the name, among the Romans, of _balatrones_.
Nothing can be imagined more graceful, nor more expressive, than
the gestures and attitudes of those dancing-girls, which may
properly be called the eloquence of the body, in which indeed
most of the Asiatics and inhabitants of the southren climates
constitutionally excel, from a sensibility more exquisite than
is the attribute of the more northern people; but a sensibility
ballanced by too many disadvantages to be envied them. The
Siamese, we are told, have three dances, called the _Cone_, the
_Lacone_, and the _Raban_. The _Cone_ is a figure-dance, in
which they use particularly a string-instrument in the nature of
a violin, with some others of the Asiatic make. Those who dance
are armed and masked, and seem to be a fighting rather than
dancing. It is a kind of Indian Pirrhic. Their masks represent
the most frightful hideous countenances of wild-beasts, or
demons, that fancy can invent. In the _Lacone_ the performers
sing commutually stanzes of verses containing the history of
their country. The Raban is a mixed dance, of men and women, not
martial, nor historical, but purely gallant; in which the
dancers have all long false nails of copper. They sing in this
dance, which is only a slow march without any high motions, but
with a great many contortions of body and arms. Those who dance
in the Raban and Cone have high gilt caps like sugar-loaves. The
dance of the _Lacone_ is appropriated to the dedication of their
temples, when a new statue of their _Sommona-codom_ is set up.

In many parts of the East, at their weddings, in conducting the
bride from her house to the bridegroom's, as in Persia
especially, they make use of processional music and dancing.
But, in the religious ceremonies of the Gentoos, when, at stated
times, they draw the triumphal car, in which the image of the
deity of the festival is carried, the procession is intermixed
with troops of dancers of both sexes, who, proceed, in chorus,
leaping, dancing, and falling into strange antics, as the
procession moves along, of which they compose a part; these
adapt their gestures an