will permit, they dance on platforms out of doors, and a heavy shower
of rain will scarcely cool their ardour in the recreation. Some of
their stage _figurantes_ resemble aerial beings rather than bone and
blood, for flesh may almost be left out of the composition. But the
Italians are a nation of dancers as well as the children of song, and
they seem to have followed the noble example of old Cato, in this
respect, with better effect than they have studied his virtue. We are
also told upon good authority, that the American dancers equal any of
the European _figurantes_.

The English people have always been lovers of dancing; and it forms
an accompaniment of almost all their old sports and pastimes. Witness
the maypoles, wassails, and wakes of rural life, and the grotesque
morris-dance, originating in a kind of Pyrrhic or military dance, and
described by Sir William Temple as composed of "ten men, who danced a
maid marian and a tabor and pipe." In the time of Henry VII. dancers
were remarkably well paid; for in some of his accounts in the
Exchequer, we find

£. s. d.
Paid to a spye, in reward----------------- 2 0 0
To Pechie, the fool, in rewarde----------- 0 6 8
To Richard Beden, for writing of bokes---- 0 10 0
_To the young dameysell that daunceth_---- 30 0 0

In Shakspeare's time, to _dance_ was an elegant accomplishment. Thus
in the "Merry Wives of Windsor," "What say you to young Mr. Fenton? He
capers, he _dances_, he has eyes of youth, he writes verses." Locke
thus alludes to the graceful motions which dancing lends to the human
frame: "the legs of the dancing-master, and the fingers of a musician,