e Barbarian nations whose
language none of my people could understand, nor they learn
ours. Such a man as this dancer would be an admirable
interpreter between us."

It would then surely be a great error to imagine, that an
habitual dexterity, a daily practice, with their arms, their
legs and feet, were the only talents of these pantomime dancers.
Their execution, without doubt, required all these advantages of
the body in the most eminent degree; but their compositions
supposed, and indispensably implied an infinite number of
combinations which belong intirely to the mind, or intellectual
faculties; as for example, especially an attentive and judicious
discernment of the most interesting truths of human nature. How
extensive a study this exacts, it is more easy to conceive than
to attain.

And surely there is an evident necessity for studying men,
before one can undertake to paint or represent them. It is not
till after a profound examination of the passions, that one
ought to flatter one's self with characterising them purely by
the powers of external signs of actions. All the passions have
affinities to each other, which it is only for a great justness
of understanding to seize; they have shades that distinguish
them, which nothing but a nice eye can perceive, and which
easily escape a superficial observer.

In serious dancing, where the character of a hero is to be
given, there are in his actions, in the course of his life,
certain marking strokes, certain incidents or extraordinary
passages, which are subjects proper for the stage, and which
must be separated from others perhaps more brilliant in history,
but which would infrigidate a theatrical composition.

In the state of dancing of our days, the dancers, and even the
composers of dances, aspire to little more than the mechanical
part of their art; and, indeed, they hardly know any thing
beyond that, and cannot in course, cultivate what they have no
conception of.

When M. Cahusac wrote, he observed that this was sufficient for
the spectators, who required nothing more than a brilliant
execution from the dancers in the old track of steps and capers;
and this is, in fact, true of the greater number now. But
lately, the taste for dances of action, animated with meaning
and conveying the idea of some fable or subject, has begun to
gain ground. People are less tired with a dance, in which the
understanding is exercised, without the fatigue of perplex