tinople; and Suetonius tells us of twelve elephants, six male
and six female, who were clothed like men and women, and performed a
country dance, in the reign of Tiberius. In later times, horses have
been taught to dance. In the carousals of Louis XIII. there were
dances of horses; and in the 13th century, some rode a horse upon a
rope. All this eclipses the puny modern feats of Astley and Ducrow.[1]

[1] Miraculous dancing is not, however, confined to animals; for
William of Malmesbury gravely relates an instance of 15 young
women and 18 young men who (by the anathema of a priest) continued
dancing a whole year, and wore the earth so much, that, by
degrees, they sunk midway into the earth!

The Greeks and Romans were divided upon the propriety of dancing.
Socrates who held death in contempt, when a reverend old gentleman,
learned to dance of Aspasia, the beautiful nurse of Grecian eloquence.
The Romans forgot their loss of the republic and of liberty--

------------------the air we breathe
If we have it not we die.

in seeing Pylades and Bathyllus dance before them in their
theatres--an indifference of which we were reminded on hearing that
the Parisians sat in the _Cafes_ on the Boulevard du Italiens--sipping
coffee and sucking down ice, during the capitulation of the city, and
while the French, killed and wounded, were conveyed along the road
before them.

Cato, _Censorius_, danced at the age of fifty-six. Cicero, however,
reproached a consul with having danced. Tiberius, that monster of
indulgences, banished dancers from Rome; and Domitian, the illustrious
fly-catcher, expelled several of his _members of parliament_ for
having danced. We are much more civilized, for such an edict as that
of Domitian would clear our senate-houses as effectually as when
Cromwell turned out the Long Parliament.

Among the Italians and the French even there have been found enemies
to dancing. Alfieri, the poet, had a great aversion to dancing; and
one Daneau wrote a Traite des Danses, in which he maintains that
"the devil never invented a more effectual way than dancing, to fill
the world with ----." The bishop of Noyon once presided at some
deliberations respecting a minuet; and in 1770, a reverend prelate
presented a document on dancing to the king of France. The Quakers
consider dancing below the dignity of the Christian character; and an
enthusiast, of another creed, thinks all lovers of the stage belo