the Parisians sat in the _Cafés_ 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 Traité 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 belong to
the schools of Voltaire and Hume, and that dancing is a link in the
chain of seduction. Stupid, leaden-heeled people, who constantly mope
in melancholy, and neither enjoy nor impart pleasure, will naturally
be enemies to dancing; and such we are induced to think the majority
of these opponents.

The French are inveterate dancers. They have their _bals parés_ and
their _salons de danse_ in every street; and as long as the weather